Judge: Lawyer Has No Constitutional Right to Wear Jeans and Hat in Court

A lawyer representing himself in a dispute with his landlord has no First Amendment right to wear jeans and a baseball cap in court, a federal judge has ruled.

The lawyer, Queens solo Todd Bank, told the New York Law Journal that he wore an Operation Desert Storm baseball cap to a Queens court to express himself and challenge the hat ban. He said he planned to appeal the adverse ruling in his declaratory judgment suit.

"I've had cases that I've lost in my career and I knew that I should have lost," Bank told the legal publication, "but this is not one of them."

U.S. District Judge Nicholas Garaufis of Brooklyn ruled against Bank, saying the restrictions on attire are reasonable and don’t discriminate against any viewpoint. “Plaintiff does not allege, for example, that a Queens judge prohibited only Yankees hats from her courtroom, or that hats with pro-war messages were permitted while anti-war hats were not,” Garaufis wrote in the Sept. 24 opinion (PDF posted by the New York Law Journal).

Garaufis also rejected Bank’s 14th Amendment claim that he had a liberty interest in his choice of apparel. “Plaintiff’s desire to make a fashion statement is far from a fundamental right,” the judge wrote.