On Thursday, the California Supreme Court ruled that lawyers who are convicted of child pornography will be disbarred automatically and banned from practicing law in the state, according to The Sacramento Bee.

The ruling was issued by the court when it was deciding what it should do with a lawyer from Orange County who pleaded guilty to possessing child porn at his residence. The court noted that holding sexual images of children is an immoral act that automatically makes an attorney unfit to work in the legal world.

"The knowing possession of child pornography is a serious breach of the duties of respect and care that all adults owe to all children, and it shows such a flagrant disrespect for the law and for societal norms, that continuation of a convicted attorney's State Bar membership would be likely to undermine public confidence in and respect for the legal profession," Justice Carol Corrigan wrote in the court's opinion.



The ruling issued by the court was unanimous in the case of Gary Douglass Grant. Grant worked as a lawyer at the Los Alamitos Army Reserve Base in Orange County. He pleaded guilty to one count of possessing child porn knowingly in 2009. Deputies for the sheriff's department found videos and photos of minor girls mixed with his adult porn collection. The images and videos were found on discs and computers.

A hearing judge for the State Bar of California and the chief trial counsel requested his disbarment. A bar appeals board ruled that disbarment should be based on individual case circumstances, not immediate disbarment simply because a lawyer possesses child porn.

The board originally suspended Grant from practicing law for two years due in part to the fact that he is a 'recovering sex and love addict.' They also issued the ruling based on his reasoning that he acquired the images by accident and attempted to delete them.

"Grant pleaded guilty to the felony of knowingly possessing child pornography. His guilty plea establishes those facts as a matter of law," Corrigan wrote. Grant's license to practice has been revoked for life. "The only question here is whether that crime, as admitted by him, constitutes moral turpitude per se. It does."