Lawyer’s Racism Sparks Court Debate Over Fair Representation (1)

Can a neonazi fairly represent a Jewish client? Can a Blue Lives Matter believer zealously serve a Black client?

Those were some of the hypotheticals Massachusetts’ top court justices lobbed out in a fervent debate over whether a Black, Muslim defendant deserves a new trial because of his lawyer’s racist, Islamophobic Facebook posts.

It’s a first-of-its-kind case that could influence other states as they mull the rights of indigent criminal defendants when they’re represented by people who harbor bias against their identities.

The issue under debate is whether a public defender’s bigotry, evidenced by 20 racist social media posts that ...