A tribunal has ruled that a solicitor who posted antisemitic tweets should not be prevented from practising after it was deemed that he made an ‘error of judgement’.
Jonathan Lea, admitted in 2006, was suspended for 12 months but the sanction was suspended for two years, subject to a restriction order limiting his social media activity.
Lea, director of Jonathan Lea Solicitors in Sussex, posted offensive tweets over the course of eight years, making references to antisemitic tropes and pledging to give preferential treatment to people who had not received the Covid-19 vaccine. He also tweeted about automatic number plate recognition cameras that ‘people need to organise, destroy those cameras and overwhelm the council with angry locals’.
Lea initially responded to the Solicitors Regulation Authority by expressing his right to free expression. He later said this response had been ‘defensive’ and he deleted certain posts, admitting the content in question ‘fell below the professional standards expected of a solicitor’.
The Solicitors Disciplinary Tribunal said that Lea’s understanding and perception of the seriousness of his conduct had ‘evolved’ and he demonstrated significant insight. In these circumstances, a suspended suspension was the most appropriate and proportionate sanction.
The tribunal ruling said: ‘The suspended suspension reflected a conclusion that Mr Lea’s conduct while objectively wrong and professionally inadequate represented an error in judgement rather than a failing deserving of the most severe sanctions available to the tribunal.
‘The tribunal considered that this case presented a warning that even experienced professionals could make serious errors in judgement when acting hastily. Solicitors as legal professionals should retain professional objectivity.’
The SRA had looked into Lea’s social media activity following a complaint. Lea had posted on Twitter/X under the public handle @jonathanlea and until 2023 he had identified himself on his profile as a solicitor.
The offensive tweets in question began in 2015 when Lea appeared to question whether the Holocaust had happened. Further posts over the years referred to a ‘one world tyrannical globalist/Zionist police state’ and invoked conspiracy tropes relating to Jewish financial control. In 2023, one post appeared to suggest that abuse was inevitable in a Jewish family and he used the word ‘Yid’.
During the pandemic, he posted ‘We act for discerning clients, not those belonging in a lunatic asylum who are perpetuating serious scientific and medical fraud to our great detriment.’ The tribunal also heard that Lea made a post that degraded and dehumanised transgender people.
Lea argued that in total he posted more than 23,000 times on his Twitter account, so the tweets highlighted were not part of any concerted campaign against a specific group. He described this conduct as a ‘judgement failure’ that would not be repeated: the discriminatory nature of some of his tweets were things that came to his mind in the heat of the moment.
As well as the suspended suspension, the tribunal order Lea to pay £25,000 costs.
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