good morning and may please the court before this case no court in the history of the republic had held that a person may be required to register as a lobbyist even though they neither receive nor spend any money in connection with influencing legislation and implicates none of these interests and that is fatal to their argument and it's not just terrorists harris of course talked about the interest in those terms but also drew the line that what we're trying to accomplish here is to distinguish between and i'm going to quote from the dissenters here even though they agree with the majority on this point that what you're trying to distinguish is between those who speak as though they represent the public when in fact they're undisclosed agents of special groups and every case to consider harris in the interim whether it's the national association of manufacturers case in the d c circuit or rulings by the supreme courts of kentucky washington and new jersey of all articulated the interest as being about hired gun lobbyists who are representing others not about individuals who show pro bono what's so special counsel about money not so much money in terms of the exchange between legislators and lobbyists which is obviously illegal but you seem to concede that if if a lobbyist is paid that there could be regulation at that point what's so special about the exchange of money at that level to make that case different in this case i think two things judge the first is that i mean as the state has articulated interest it's the problem of corruption which we've been hearing about this morning position judge our position throughout this legend this litigation has been if someone is spending money to influence legislation they can be fairly captured as a lobbyist and the state here is conceded that mr kells own doesn't do anything like that well i thought a lot of your argument was about whether he was paid well that is because that's the basis on which the missouri ethics commission is attempting to regulate him they're not claiming that he spends money and that to influence that he's not giving anything of value to legislators if you word this would be a different case the is that mr calderon has been designated by and on profit with no money so you see if he's designated by a nonprofit with no money and gets no money for being the lobbyist for the nonprofit but he buys lunch for somebody  legislator then he subject to regulation yes that's our position and that's also i would point out the position of the only case the m e c was able to find in a nationwide survey they cite to the smith case of the an intermediate court of appeal california and in that case it's true that the the appellant there had argued you can't reach me because i'm one compensated but he was being regulated under a statute that said if you spend five thousand dollars trying to influence legislation every quarter then we captured you what  what if you work for a corporation not a nonprofit but a corporation and doesn't receive any money he's trying to get the business of the corporation he does one for free i think there again the government simply doesn't have an interest but don't you have a potential corruption interest especially in a situation like that you even have a not opposite situation the lobbyist could say for example well you know if you vote for this particular piece of legislation the operational do a favor for you in the future no money it's exchanged hands but there's still  lobbyist can produce for me when i need it because he's got this army of people behind him and so when i need the volunteers next time around or whatever he'll produce them if i go along with his request lies and then enough of an interest at least you're quire disclosure of who's doing what well i think for two reasons one is that every case ever consider corruption has talked about money and that's cases it's really an argument for universal registration under that theory it's not really clear who would be outside of the statute that's actually one of our major concerns here but doesn't that get if it doesn't get doesn't this line of questioning get to represent representational nature of what's going on here in the sense that what makes this case differently so what i anticipate missouri might say is you're representing somebody else and so there's there's perhaps more of a chance of put pro quo corruption in a situation like that i think we need to regulate that i think that is what they would say course they can't point to any case that would support them and not because i thought i take the point the problem is that without a monetary transaction that the regulator can look out they're forced to engage in what's happened here they're forced put all of the effort on whether or not you've been designated so that when they this is the way that plays out in practice right you know the the m d c has taken the position has taken you could run afoul of this particular provision if you don't yet register so what's vague about about the statute what's vague is that no one on these facts knows whether they've been designated or not i think of it this way your honor that when mr colson goes to jefferson city he's either a lot b s before he gets there or he's a lobbyist by virtue of identifying himself in some way once he gets there and then he has taken positions on both sides of that they've said well no he's so closely connected to this nonprofit that is basically a web site which they've stipulated has no money that you know whatever he does is representing them and then they said no you don't have to worry about that because since he doesn't identify himself as being a director of missouri first now we're not going to force against him let me ask you this though and you can tell me that that state doesn't raise this and as as an entrance but i want to hear what your answer would be anyways which is one of the things that's interesting about this is is the representational interest and i we talked about that is there some sort of interest of the state and regulating that representational relationship sort of like the state or state supreme court would regulate lawyers in other words you want to make sure that there's nothing unethical going on either in the relationship between the lobbyist two different types of people you're conflating a closely regulated class of professionals that have certain duties myself or you're on or with just citizens who are trying to petition their government and that's the problem here the problem is they're trying to take someone who's just a citizen trying to petition their government and turn them into a professional office and make them file monthly reports and make them terminate and say that they no longer have representations and subject them to this incredibly burdensome enforcement process as though they were the sort of people you know going back to the swanson opinion you know who can file hire lawyers who aren't intimidated by this process who are going to say it's just not worth while lawyers do that all the time including as your honor points out in pro bono cases that's because they're professional lawyers they've been certified they've they've made enormous investments to get there there are people like that who are professional obvious and it's fine for the missouri authorities to regulate those people the problem is the the problem is trying to convert mr cowles own into one of those state in response relies mostly on campaign finance cases and we think the problem with that is obvious from the fact finance is in the title but i would point this court to its own decision in the tooker case where  a panel this court held that a report which didn't include contributions or expenditures reflected a situation where the government's interest was and i'm quoting here tenuous at best this is precisely such a situation the forms that the  like mr gao zhan to file will include essentially nothing but his name and the fact that he has a law he doesn't have a lobbyist principle there's no in place where he has to disclose that he made no payments but i think that's their point your honor is that was that on point in case you do find us the statute defines a lobbyist principle you know the person you list as the person you're lobbying for as someone who compensates or otherwise pays as lobbyists so the form you would have would be wrong name and just a blank it's literally a name calling exercise all it is is ron paul's own as a lobbyist and then walk away that sort of information could mean wanted two things it could mean nothing or could be that the state's trying to prove a negative and he said the state's trying to prove a negative by forcing anyone to register so they know whether you're spending money i would argue that's simply too far afield is not it is not appropriate fit under either strict or exacting scrutiny question question the district court in its opinion when it got to the  nation of this issue about the statute use of the term designate it says that your challenge with respect to that is a facial challenge to the statute is it was the district court correct to do that did it correctly evaluate your kleinman that the but the premise for your client in the sense that various challenges are facial yes of course we al has to do with the first i'm in the piece of this and then secondly is vagueness with respect to the word designate i think that's correct or are we the first the first claim is the first amendment requires in our view strict scrutiny in this context because they've taken money out of the system because that economic moment which you form the agency relationship doesn't exist and they can't target the word designate as doing all the work in the statute and now then you went into broader well what i'm getting to on the facial the question about the facial challenge on the word designate is it isn't the most of the time isn't the designation going to be clear doesn't that we're surprised very well because a person is going to be appointed by board or elected by the group or designated by the group to conduct these activities i think not and i think that's the real danger here is that once there's no longer a financial component any time anyone has a lobbying day any time the boy scouts or the sierra club get together some people city to talk to legislators which happens all the time and we put in examples of that we got all those people operating at their peril because how they've been designated by the sierra club have the the dental hygienists we put in the record who have received training for that organization had they been designated probably but i don't think a person of ordinary intelligence or informed us is going to know that when they sign up for the lobby day for an organization they support even though they're not paid even though they receive nothing for doing so except you know a sense of you're the president organization you're lobbying whenever you talk to people or if you sign on a form now you're lobbying or you know this sort of lack of clarity goes forth with vagueness and overgrowth why does mr cowles own preferred to appear in the legislature and say he's appearing on behalf of missouri first rather than just petitioning his government as an individual i'm not sure those are the facts here are the stipulated facts are that he identifies himself as a director of mis first and i don't want to speak to a subjective motivation just like i would want to speak to the subject of motivation of the boy scouts of sierra club members i also see my time is it a record doesn't show why he identifies himself as a director i mean i imagine he wants to exercise an associate of liberty i'd like to reserve my permitting seconds for both of you may very well thank you for your argument  blake will hear from you it just the podium goes up and down to i think on the right side there's a button on the right  please the court and let's begin by going straight to judge strauss's first question which is what's so special about paying the lobbyist in terms of the state interest in transparency and lobbying interactions there is nothing special about the lobbyist being paid or whether the lobbyist is pro bono state interest in transparency is the same in both cases is that true even if nothing is exchanged devalue either money or some sort of promise or favor if it's just merely a citizen going up even on behalf of another and lobbying on behalf of a nonprofit or a corporation or whatever representational interest you want to you want to put there yes even assuming that the legislator doesn't receive anything of value from the lobbyist the public still has an interest in knowing who is representing other people to interact with the lobbyists if this law weren't in place and the people didn't know you would have lobbyists going up and there'd be no way of knowing who their lobbying principle was the contact information for that reason if there was a lobbying principle maybe the legislator would know but the public would not have any opportunity to know well this may bleed into the last argument but these cases overlap to some degree which is that you know there is an interest the supreme court recognized an interest in anonymous speech why doesn't it extend here why does the public have a right to know if a citizen if there's a lobbying day and or whatever and a citizen is lobbying on behalf of another corporation or individual right and perhaps you refute referring to some of justice interest that satisfies exactly scrutiny and overcomes that nature of an interest in anonymous speech from mcintire in those cases that's true but doesn't don't the disclosure precedence just run to exchanges of money at least the ones that the do instead there would be to direct this court to precedent in swanson where this court ruled on bond at that exact same scrutiny applies to disclosure laws and if you look at that case this court did not make a distinction among different kinds of political speech and merely said when is subject to exactly scrutiny and we think that controls this case so how would you articulate the state's interest in requiring the disclosure if the lobbyist doesn't he would have to register and report if he were designated but i says because he doesn't spend any money either there is no of interest of the state religion i'm interested in acquiring regulation so that's what i was asking about right so there's a few points in response to that just to start by clarifying the issue if you look at the definition of a legislative lobbyist who is required to register and report that definition has four sections  the reasons why he thinks he's special compared to other lobbyists one is he's not buying lunch and giving money to their legislators to his organization that has been in the post of president isn't paying him to be their president at cetera i understood  so the government has an interest in regulating any lobbyist who does payments to legislators in the course of lobbying for legislative action and that we think is fairly controlled by harris which talks about the federal laws that says you know  interesting right so that's actually about seventy five percent of missouri's nine hundred to one thousand registered lobbyist nearly all of them check the not expenditure box when they do their reports with the ethics commission and in that case that gets to the representational interests th area so what's the risk of corruption here as to course talks about who's hiring them and paying them and so forth an unpaid person would implicate those interests so what is being  judgment in itself by the people that transparency sufficient government interest consider a hypothetical where you have a former powerful legislator who goes into lobbying and says i'm going to do it pro bono right away but lo and behold on behalf of my client the state republican or democratic party if there's no transparency interest in disclosing that and he's unpaid and he's not actually buying lunches or world series tickets or anything the public would have no way of knowing on who one the best ways to avoid corruption why do you care about transparency to avert the specter of corruption when i when i asked counsel what what kind of challenge he was bringing with respect to this issue about the word designate you've used answer he he kind of moved over and brought in this scenario of the of the boy scouts or a chapter of the sierra club or i guess it could be a local parent teacher organization falling under the purview of the us is that is that kind of objection is that with in the background of this lawsuit or a lawsuit or is that  and here there's a lot of their sierra club members here i care about this but they're not representing and designated by the circle to speak for them then you know i think an ordinary member of the public would be would understand they're not representing  you send out an e mail and you say we're going up to the capitol on such and such date go up there and represent the sierra club's interest in having a particular piece of legislation defeated or whatever is that sufficient to bring that within the coverage of the statute have to wait for a separate lawsuit you know as i understand this of addition to some reporting going out some forms you have to pay someone that falls under this has to pay a dollar fee issue that has to do with education and they have to pay to do that they have to pay ten dollars or more to do that isn't that just a problem with that well i think that's why the first amendment overview i mean it's not it's not that we're saying that you know the first amendment just per se doesn't apply in that the legislature can do whatever it wants to regulate lobbyist you know and certainly this case is very different from where the fifth would be different and exacting scrutiny might  example all the cases say in their brief about prior restraint you can't speak at all and a revolving door statute in various blackout periods you know that fit might raise a serious question and very well in that case it wouldn't be a disclosure law scrutiny you need a substantial relation to the disclosure requirement sufficiently important government interest of looking whether it's closely drawn relative to the first minute burden here a two minute online form with the box to check if you've got  the n r a case as well and so we do think that that's also important part of measuring the fit is the strength of the government interest in transparency in lobbying relationships and the importance of the public transparency into an area that  had the factor appearance of real corruption concerns i want to step back for just a minute and ask a really basic question which is we've we've got a facial challenge or the void for vagueness challenged i want to hear from opposing counsel as well we don't have an overbroad challenge as we discussed is the basic first amendment challenge where we're applying exacting scrutiny as there are faithful and in as applied challenge here or just one or the other i understand that the entirely upon hypotheticals to develop an interest that's never been recognized by a court and we would argue that shrink missouri for close of that approach absent evidence that somehow uncompensated people raise the same issues that have been recognized the cases which are explicitly about the spending and that's what i thought you were arguing that it shouldn't apply namely use not compensated but then the first time up you seem to be saying no no as soon as you spend any money then you can be regulated i think the facts in this case are someone doesn't either there's no governmental interest know but it's a quite different theory whether it's based on the fact that he's unpaid or the fact that he's not spending well i think at this point i think we'll it's almost a question of standing the the the state's theory of enforcement is that he has violated this part of the legislative lobbying law about being selected by someone to lobby for them and we've explained why we read the statute differently but they have not attempted to enforce on the other basis they just finally we think the burdens here are indistinguishable from swanson and