WASHINGTON (JTA) — Jay Marshall Wolman, like a thousand other lawyers on Twitter, is wry, maybe a little coarse and, well, Jewish, peppering his tweets with Hebrew blessings and other Jewish references.
He gets deadly serious, though, if you ask him why he is the lead attorney representing Andrew Anglin, America’s most notorious Nazi.
Wolman was in the headlines this week for his attempt to dismiss a lawsuit against Anglin alleging the Daily Stormer founder harassed a Jewish real estate agent in Montana. Tanya Gersh’s suit claims Anglin caused her “emotional distress” last year when he called for a “troll storm” against her and published her personal information.
Wolman, according to the Missoulian, a Montana daily, argued that Anglin was living abroad at the time and therefore is out of the court’s jurisdiction. (Lawyers for Gersh and the Southern Poverty Law Center, which is assisting her, have been unable to find Anglin. A U.S. magistrate in Missoula has given Anglin until Friday to prove his whereabouts.)
Wolman is not shy in his social media profile about being Jewish, so I asked him why he thought it was a good idea to represent Anglin, who heads an online clearinghouse of extreme anti-Semitic and racist thought.
Wolman, 41, declined an interview, but wrote me the following: “As a Jewish member of the team representing Andrew Anglin, I can understand why you are interested in talking with me about why I represent him and how that relates to my identity. However, I must, politely, decline the invitation. Although I do not shy away from media inquiries, I do not tend to make myself a subject of reporting.
“That said, as you will, undoubtedly, be reporting on me, I would direct your attention to our reference to the Aaron Sorkin film, “The American President.”
Wolman included a quote from that 1995 film in which the titular president says “America isn’t easy. America is advanced citizenship. You’ve gotta want it bad, ’cause it’s gonna put up a fight. It’s gonna say, ‘You want free speech? Let’s see you acknowledge a man whose words make your blood boil, who’s standing center stage and advocating at the top of his lungs that which you would spend a lifetime opposing at the top of yours.’”
Added Wolman:
“I would spend a lifetime opposing what was said, but I will never allow anti-Semitism to derail my commitment to freedom of speech. In the words of Justice Holmes, ‘hard cases make bad law.’ Any restrictions the courts might set on the speech of a person whose speech you oppose will be undoubtedly applied, at some point down the road, to the speech of a person whose speech you support. If Andrew Anglin does not have freedom of speech, then neither does the JTA.”
The popular culture reference to a 1990s film was not a surprise: Wolman’s Twitter feed reveals his affection for films of that decade and the 1980s (he’s a fan of “Say Anything,” the classic 1989 John Cusack angsty teen drama). Wolman was a contestant on “Jeopardy” in 2004 — not the best period because he was up against Ken Jennings, the quiz show’s all-time champ.
Wolman and his law partner, Marc Randazza, consistently cast their decision to defend Anglin in not-easy-but-someone’s-gotta-do-it terms.
