Source: http://www.leagle.com/decision/20011064531US533_11037/LEGAL%20SERVICES%20CORPORATION%20v.%20VELAZQUEZ
Timestamp: 2017-06-28 01:48:59
Document Index: 757501797

Matched Legal Cases: ['§ 2996', '§ 2996', '§ 2996', '§ 2996', '§ 2996', '§ 2996', '§ 504', '§ 1639', '§ 1002', '§ 300', '§ 300', '§ 2996', '§ 504', '§ 2996', '§ 2996', '§ 2996', '§ 2996', '§ 2996', '§ 2996', '§ 1639', '§ 504', '§ 504', '§ 504', '§ 504', '§ 504', '§ 504', '§ 2996', '§ 2996', '§ 2996', '§ 504', '§ 504', '§ 504', '§ 504', '§ 504', '§ 504', '§ 504', '§ 504', '§ 504']

LEGAL SERVICES CORPORATION v. VELAZQUEZ | 531 U.S. 533 (2001) | Leagle.com
Citing Case 531 U.S. 533 (2001)
Argued October 4, 2000.
Alan Levine argued the cause for petitioner in No. 99-603. With him on the briefs was Stephen L. Ascher. Deputy Solicitor General Kneedler argued the cause for the United States in No. 99-960. With him on the briefs were Solicitor General Waxman, Acting Assistant Attorney General Ogden, Beth S. Brinkmann, Barbara L. Herwig, and Matthew M. Collette. Burt Neuborne argued the cause for respondents in both cases. With him on the brief were Laura K. Abel, Kimani Paul-Emile, Paul K. Sonn, David S. Udell, Peter M. Fishbein, and Alan E. Rothman.†
Kennedy, J., delivered the opinion of the Court, in which Stevens, Souter, Ginsburg, and Breyer, JJ., joined. Scalia, J., filed a dissenting opinion in which Rehnquist, C. J., and O'Connor and Thomas, JJ., joined, p. 549.
In 1974, Congress enacted the Legal Services Corporation Act, 88 Stat. 378, 42 U. S. C. § 2996 et seq. The Act establishes the Legal Services Corporation (LSC) as a District of Columbia nonprofit corporation. LSC's mission is to distribute funds appropriated by Congress to eligible local grantee organizations "for the purpose of providing financial support for legal assistance in noncriminal proceedings or matters to persons financially unable to afford legal assistance." § 2996b(a).
From the inception of the LSC, Congress has placed restrictions on its use of funds. For instance, the LSC Act prohibits recipients from making available LSC funds, program personnel, or equipment to any political party, to any political campaign, or for use in "advocating or opposing any ballot measures." 42 U. S. C. § 2996e(d)(4). See § 2996e(d)(3). The Act further proscribes use of funds in most criminal proceedings and in litigation involving nontherapeutic abortions, secondary school desegregation, military desertion, or violations of the Selective Service statute. §§ 2996f(b)(8)—(10) (1994 ed. and Supp. IV). Fund recipients are barred from bringing class-action suits unless express approval is obtained from LSC. § 2996e(d)(5).
In 1997, LSC adopted final regulations clarifying § 504(a)(16). 45 CFR pt. 1639 (1999). LSC interpreted the statutory provision to allow indigent clients to challenge welfare agency determinations of benefit ineligibility under interpretations of existing law. For example, an LSC grantee could represent a welfare claimant who argued that an agency made an erroneous factual determination or that an agency misread or misapplied a term contained in an existing welfare statute. According to LSC, a grantee in that position could argue as well that an agency policy violated existing law. § 1639.4. Under LSC's interpretation, however, grantees could not accept representations designed to change welfare laws, much less argue against the constitutionality or statutory validity of those laws. Brief for Petitioner in No. 99-603, p. 7. Even in cases where constitutional or statutory challenges became apparent after representation was well under way, LSC advised that its attorneys must withdraw. Ibid. After the instant suit was filed in the District Court alleging the restrictions on the use of LSC funds violated the First Amendment, see 985 F.Supp. 323 (1997), the court denied a preliminary injunction, finding no probability of success on the merits. Id., at 344.
Dissenting in part, Judge Jacobs agreed with the majority except for its holding that the proviso banning challenges to existing welfare laws effected impermissible viewpointbased discrimination. The provision, in his view, was permissible because it merely defined the scope of services to be funded. Id., at 773-778 (opinion concurring in part and dissenting in part).
The United States and LSC rely on Rust v. Sullivan, 500 U.S. 173 (1991), as support for the LSC program restrictions. In Rust, Congress established program clinics to provide subsidies for doctors to advise patients on a variety of family planning topics. Congress did not consider abortion to be within its family planning objectives, however, and it forbade doctors employed by the program from discussing abortion with their patients. Id., at 179-180. Recipients of funds under Title X of the Public Health Service Act, §§ 1002, 1008, as added, 84 Stat. 1506, 1508, 42 U. S. C. §§ 300a, 300a—6, challenged the Act's restriction that provided that none of the Title X funds appropriated for family planning services could "be used in programs where abortion is a method of family planning." § 300a—6. The recipients argued that the regulations constituted impermissible viewpoint discrimination favoring an antiabortion position over a proabortion approach in the sphere of family planning. 500 U. S., at 192. They asserted as well that Congress had imposed an unconstitutional condition on recipients of federal funds by requiring them to relinquish their right to engage in abortion advocacy and counseling in exchange for the subsidy. Id., at 196.
The Government has designed this program to use the legal profession and the established Judiciary of the States and the Federal Government to accomplish its end of assisting welfare claimants in determination or receipt of their benefits. The advice from the attorney to the client and the advocacy by the attorney to the courts cannot be classified as governmental speech even under a generous understanding of the concept. In this vital respect this suit is distinguishable from Rust. The private nature of the speech involved here, and the extent of LSC's regulation of private expression, are indicated further by the circumstance that the Government seeks to use an existing medium of expression and to control it, in a class of cases, in ways which distort its usual functioning. Where the government uses or attempts to regulate a particular medium, we have been informed by its accepted usage in determining whether a particular restriction on speech is necessary for the program's purposes and limitations. In FCC v. League of Women Voters of Cal., 468 U.S. 364 (1984), the Court was instructed by its understanding of the dynamics of the broadcast industry in holding that prohibitions against editorializing by public radio networks were an impermissible restriction, even though the Government enacted the restriction to control the use of public funds. The First Amendment forbade the Government from using the forum in an unconventional way to suppress speech inherent in the nature of the medium. See id., at 396-397. In Arkansas Ed. Television Comm'n v. Forbes, 523 U.S. 666, 676 (1998), the dynamics of the broadcasting system gave station programmers the right to use editorial judgment to exclude certain speech so that the broadcast message could be more effective. And in Rosenberger, the fact that student newspapers expressed many different points of view was an important foundation for the Court's decision to invalidate viewpoint-based restrictions. 515 U. S., at 836.
LSC has advised us, furthermore, that upon determining a question of statutory validity is present in any anticipated or pending case or controversy, the LSC-funded attorney must cease the representation at once. This is true whether the validity issue becomes apparent during initial attorneyclient consultations or in the midst of litigation proceedings. A disturbing example of the restriction was discussed during oral argument before the Court. It is well understood that when there are two reasonable constructions for a statute, yet one raises a constitutional question, the Court should prefer the interpretation which avoids the constitutional issue. Gomez v. United States, 490 U.S. 858, 864 (1989); Ashwander v. TVA, 297 U.S. 288, 346-348 (1936) (Brandeis, J., concurring). Yet, as the LSC advised the Court, if, during litigation, a judge were to ask an LSC attorney whether there was a constitutional concern, the LSC attorney simply could not answer. Tr. of Oral Arg. 8-9.
The restriction on speech is even more problematic because in cases where the attorney withdraws from a representation, the client is unlikely to find other counsel. The explicit premise for providing LSC attorneys is the necessity to make available representation "to persons financially unable to afford legal assistance." 42 U. S. C. § 2996(a)(3). There often will be no alternative source for the client to receive vital information respecting constitutional and statutory rights bearing upon claimed benefits. Thus, with respect to the litigation services Congress has funded, there is no alternative channel for expression of the advocacy Congress seeks to restrict. This is in stark contrast to Rust. There, a patient could receive the approved Title X family planning counseling funded by the Government and later could consult an affiliate or independent organization to receive abortion counseling. Unlike indigent clients who seek LSC representation, the patient in Rust was not required to forfeit the Government-funded advice when she also received abortion counseling through alternative channels. Because LSC attorneys must withdraw whenever a question of a welfare statute's validity arises, an individual could not obtain joint representation so that the constitutional challenge would be presented by a non-LSC attorney, and other, permitted, arguments advanced by LSC counsel.
The effect of the restriction, however, is to prohibit advice or argumentation that existing welfare laws are unconstitutional or unlawful. Congress cannot recast a condition on funding as a mere definition of its program in every case, lest the First Amendment be reduced to a simple semantic exercise. Here, notwithstanding Congress' purpose to confine and limit its program, the restriction operates to insulate current welfare laws from constitutional scrutiny and certain other legal challenges, a condition implicating central First Amendment concerns. In no lawsuit funded by the Government can the LSC attorney, speaking on behalf of a private client, challenge existing welfare laws. As a result, arguments by indigent clients that a welfare statute is unlawful or unconstitutional cannot be expressed in this Governmentfunded program for petitioning the courts, even though the program was created for litigation involving welfare benefits, and even though the ordinary course of litigation involves the expression of theories and postulates on both, or multiple, sides of an issue.
It is fundamental that the First Amendment "`was fashioned to assure unfettered interchange of ideas for the bringing about of political and social changes desired by the people.'" New York Times Co. v. Sullivan, 376 U.S. 254, 269 (1964) (quoting Roth v. United States, 354 U.S. 476, 484 (1957)). There can be little doubt that the LSC Act funds constitutionally protected expression; and in the context of this statute there is no programmatic message of the kind recognized in Rust and which sufficed there to allow the Government to specify the advice deemed necessary for its legitimate objectives. This serves to distinguish § 504(a)(16) from any of the Title X program restrictions upheld in Rust, and to place it beyond any congressional funding condition approved in the past by this Court.
Affirmed. Justice Scalia, with whom The Chief Justice, Justice O'Connor, and Justice Thomas join, dissenting.
The Legal Services Corporation Act of 1974 (LSC Act), 42 U. S. C. § 2996 et seq., is a federal subsidy program, the stated purpose of which is to "provid[e] financial support for legal assistance in noncriminal proceedings or matters to persons financially unable to afford legal assistance." § 2996b(a). Congress, recognizing that the program could not serve its purpose unless it was "kept free from the influence of or use by it of political pressures," § 2996(5), has from the program's inception tightly regulated the use of its funds. See ante, at 537-538. No Legal Services Corporation (LSC) funds may be used, for example, for "encouraging . . . labor or antilabor activities," § 2996f(b)(6), for "litigation relating to the desegregation of any elementary or secondary school or school system," § 2996f(b)(9), or for "litigation which seeks to procure a nontherapeutic abortion," § 2996f(b)(8). Congress discovered through experience, however, that these restrictions did not exhaust the politically controversial uses to which LSC funds could be put.
Accordingly, in 1996 Congress added new restrictions to the LSC Act and strengthened existing restrictions. Among the new restrictions is the one at issue here. Section 504(a)(16) of the Appropriations Act, 110 Stat. 1321-55 to 1321-56, withholds LSC funds from every entity that "participates in any . . . way . . . in litigation, lobbying, or rulemaking . . . involving an effort to reform a Federal or State welfare system." It thus bans LSC-funded entities from participating on either side of litigation involving such statutes, from participating in rulemaking relating to the implementation of such legislation, and from lobbying Congress itself regarding any proposed changes to such legislation. See 45 CFR § 1639.3 (2000).
If a suit for benefits raises a claim outside the scope of the LSC program, the LSC-funded lawyer may not participate in the suit. As the Court explains, if LSC-funded lawyers anticipate that a forbidden claim will arise in a prospective client's suit, they "may not undertake [the] representation," ante, at 544. Likewise, if a forbidden claim arises unexpectedly at trial, "LSC-funded attorney[s] must cease the representation at once," ante, at 544-545. See also Brief for Petitioner in No. 99-603, at 7, n. 4 (if the issue arises at trial, "the lawyer should discontinue the representation `consistent with the applicable rules of professional responsibility'"). The lawyers may, however, and indeed must explain to the client why they cannot represent him. See 164 F.3d 757, 765 (CA2 1999). They are also free to express their views of the legality of the welfare law to the client, and they may refer the client to another attorney who can accept the representation, ibid. See 985 F.Supp. 323, 335— 336 (EDNY 1997).
The LSC Act is a federal subsidy program, not a federal regulatory program, and "[t]here is a basic difference between [the two]." Maher v. Roe, 432 U.S. 464, 475 (1977). Regulations directly restrict speech; subsidies do not. Subsidies, it is true, may indirectly abridge speech, but only if the funding scheme is "`manipulated' to have a `coercive effect'" on those who do not hold the subsidized position. National Endowment for Arts v. Finley, 524 U.S. 569, 587 (1998) (quoting Arkansas Writers' Project, Inc. v. Ragland, 481 U.S. 221, 237 (1987) (Scalia, J., dissenting)). Proving unconstitutional coercion is difficult enough when the spending program has universal coverage and excludes only certain speech—such as a tax exemption scheme excluding lobbying expenses. The Court has found such programs unconstitutional only when the exclusion was "aimed at the suppression of dangerous ideas." Speiser v. Randall, 357 U.S. 513, 519 (1958) (internal quotation marks omitted); see also Regan v. Taxation With Representation of Wash., 461 U.S. 540, 550 (1983). Proving the requisite coercion is harder still when a spending program is not universal but limited, providing benefits to a restricted number of recipients, see Rust v. Sullivan, 500 U.S. 173, 194-195 (1991). The Court has found such selective spending unconstitutionally coercive only once, when the government created a public forum with the spending program but then discriminated in distributing funding within the forum on the basis of viewpoint. See Rosenberger v. Rector and Visitors of Univ. of Va., 515 U.S. 819, 829-830 (1995). When the limited spending program does not create a public forum, proving coercion is virtually impossible, because simply denying a subsidy "does not `coerce' belief," Lyng v. Automobile Workers, 485 U.S. 360, 369 (1988), and because the criterion of unconstitutionality is whether denial of the subsidy threatens "to drive certain ideas or viewpoints from the marketplace," National Endowment for Arts v. Finley, supra, at 587 (internal quotation marks omitted). Absent such a threat, "the Government may allocate . . . funding according to criteria that would be impermissible were direct regulation of speech or a criminal penalty at stake." 524 U. S., at 587-588.
The same is true here. The LSC Act, like the scheme in Rust, see 500 U. S., at 200, does not create a public forum. Far from encouraging a diversity of views, it has always, as the Court accurately states, "placed restrictions on its use of funds," ante, at 537. Nor does § 504(a)(16) discriminate on the basis of viewpoint, since it funds neither challenges to nor defenses of existing welfare law. The provision simply declines to subsidize a certain class of litigation, and under Rust that decision "does not infringe the right" to bring such litigation. Cf. Ortwein v. Schwab, 410 U.S. 656, 658-660, and n. 5 (1973) (per curiam) (government not required by First Amendment or Due Process Clause to waive filing fee for welfare benefits litigation). The Court's repeated claims that § 504(a)(16) "restricts" and "prohibits" speech, see, e. g., ante, at 545, 546, and "insulates" laws from judicial review, see, e. g., ante, at 547, are simply baseless. No litigant who, in the absence of LSC funding, would bring a suit challenging existing welfare law is deterred from doing so by § 504(a)(16). Rust thus controls these cases and compels the conclusion that § 504(a)(16) is constitutional.
The Court contends that Rust is different because the program at issue subsidized government speech, while the LSC funds private speech. See ante, at 541-542. This is so unpersuasive it hardly needs response. If the private doctors' confidential advice to their patients at issue in Rust constituted "government speech," it is hard to imagine what subsidized speech would not be government speech. Moreover, the majority's contention that the subsidized speech in these cases is not government speech because the lawyers have a professional obligation to represent the interests of their clients founders on the reality that the doctors in Rust had a professional obligation to serve the interests of their patients, see 500 U. S., at 214 (Blackmun, J., dissenting) ("ethical responsibilities of the medical profession")—which at the time of Rust we had held to be highly relevant to the permissible scope of federal regulation, see Thornburgh v. American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, 476 U.S. 747, 763 (1986) ("professional responsibilities" of physicians), overruled in part on other grounds, Planned Parenthood of Southeastern Pa. v. Casey, 505 U.S. 833 (1992). Even respondents agree that "the true speaker in Rust was not the government, but a doctor." Brief for Respondents 19, n. 17.
The Court further asserts that these cases are different from Rust because the welfare funding restriction "seeks to use an existing medium of expression and to control it . . . in ways which distort its usual functioning," ante, at 543. This is wrong on both the facts and the law. It is wrong on the law because there is utterly no precedent for the novel and facially implausible proposition that the First Amendment has anything to do with government funding that—though it does not actually abridge anyone's speech—"distorts an existing medium of expression." None of the three cases cited by the Court mentions such an odd principle. In Rosenberger v. Rector and Visitors of Univ. of Va., the point critical to the Court's analysis was not, as the Court would have it, that it is part of the "usual functioning" of student newspapers to "expres[s] many different points of view," ante, at 543 (it surely is not), but rather that the spending program itself had been created "to encourage a diversity of views from private speakers," 515 U. S., at 834. What could not be distorted was the public forum that the spending program had created. As for Arkansas Ed. Television Comm'n v. Forbes, 523 U.S. 666 (1998), that case discussed the nature of television broadcasting, not to determine whether government regulation would alter its "usual functioning" and thus violate the First Amendment (no government regulation was even at issue in the case), but rather to determine whether state-owned television is a "public forum" under our First Amendment jurisprudence. Id., at 673-674. And finally, the passage the Court cites from FCC v. League of Women Voters of Cal., 468 U.S. 364, 396-397 (1984), says nothing whatever about "using the forum [of public radio] in an unconventional way to suppress speech inherent in the nature of the medium," ante, at 543. It discusses why the Government's asserted interest in "preventing [public radio] stations from becoming a privileged outlet for the political and ideological opinions of station owners and managers," 468 U. S., at 396 (internal quotation marks omitted), was insubstantial and thus could not justify the statute's restriction on editorializing. Even worse for the Court, after invalidating the restriction on this conventional First Amendment ground, League of Women Voters goes on to say that "[o]f course," the restriction on editorializing "would plainly be valid" if"Congress were to adopt a revised version of [the statute] that permitted [public radio] stations to establish `affiliate' organizations which could then use the station's facilities to editorialize with nonfederal funds." Id., at 400. But of course that is the case here. Regulations permit funding recipients to establish affiliate organizations to conduct litigation and other activities that fall outside the scope of the LSC program. See 45 CFR pt. 1610 (2000). Far from supporting the Court's nondistortion analysis, League of Women Voters dooms the Court's case.
The Court's "nondistortion" principle is also wrong on the facts, since there is no basis for believing that § 504(a)(16), by causing "cases [to] be presented by LSC attorneys who [can]not advise the courts of serious questions of statutory validity," ante, at 545, will distort the operation of the courts. It may well be that the bar of § 504(a)(16) will cause LSCfunded attorneys to decline or to withdraw from cases that involve statutory validity. But that means at most that fewer statutory challenges to welfare laws will be presented to the courts because of the unavailability of free legal services for that purpose. So what? The same result would ensue from excluding LSC-funded lawyers from welfare litigation entirely. It is not the mandated, nondistortable function of the courts to inquire into all "serious questions of statutory validity" in all cases. Courts must consider only those questions of statutory validity that are presented by litigants, and if the Government chooses not to subsidize the presentation of some such questions, that in no way "distorts" the courts' role. It is remarkable that a Court that has so studiously avoided deciding whether Congress could entirely eliminate federal jurisdiction over certain matters, see, e. g., Webster v. Doe, 486 U.S. 592, 603 (1988); Bowen v. Michigan Academy of Family Physicians, 476 U.S. 667, 681, n. 12 (1986), would be so eager to hold the much lesser step of declining to subsidize the litigation unconstitutional under the First Amendment.
Nor will the judicial opinions produced by LSC cases systematically distort the interpretation of welfare laws. Judicial decisions do not stand as binding "precedent" for points that were not raised, not argued, and hence not analyzed. See, e. g., United States v. Verdugo-Urquidez, 494 U.S. 259, 272 (1990); Hagans v. Lavine, 415 U.S. 528, 533, n. 5 (1974); United States v. L. A. Tucker Truck Lines, Inc., 344 U.S. 33, 37-38 (1952); United States v. More, 3 Cranch 159, 172 (1805) (Marshall, C. J.). The statutory validity that courts assume in LSC cases will remain open for full determination in later cases.
Finally, the Court is troubled "because in cases where the attorney withdraws from a representation, the client is unlikely to find other counsel." Ante, at 546. That is surely irrelevant, since it leaves the welfare recipient in no worse condition than he would have been in had the LSC program never been enacted. Respondents properly concede that even if welfare claimants cannot obtain a lawyer anywhere else, the Government is not required to provide one. Brief for Respondents 16; accord, Goldberg v. Kelly, 397 U.S. 254, 270 (1970) (government not required to provide counsel at hearing regarding termination of welfare benefits). It is hard to see how providing free legal services to some welfare claimants (those whose claims do not challenge the applicable statutes) while not providing it to others is beyond the range of legitimate legislative choice. Rust rejected a similar argument:
The only conceivable argument that can be made for distinguishing Rust is that there even patients who wished to receive abortion counseling could receive the nonabortion services that the Government-funded clinic offered, whereas here some potential LSC clients who wish to receive representation on a benefits claim that does not challenge the statutes will be unable to do so because their cases raise a reform claim that an LSC lawyer may not present. This difference, of course, is required by the same ethical canons that the Court elsewhere does not wish to distort. Rather than sponsor "truncated representation," ante, at 546, Congress chose to subsidize only those cases in which the attorneys it subsidized could work freely. See, e. g., 42 U. S. C. § 2996(6) ("[A]ttorneys providing legal assistance must have full freedom to protect the best interests of their clients"). And it is impossible to see how this difference from Rust has any bearing upon the First Amendment question, which, to repeat, is whether the funding scheme is "`manipulated' to have a `coercive effect'" on those who do not hold the subsidized position. National Endowment for Arts v. Finley, 524 U. S., at 587 (quoting Arkansas Writers' Project, Inc. v. Ragland, 481 U. S., at 237 (Scalia, J., dissenting)). It could be claimed to have such an effect if the client in a case ineligible for LSC representation could eliminate the ineligibility by waiving the claim that the statute is invalid; but he cannot. No conceivable coercive effect exists.
It is clear to me that the LSC Act's funding of welfare benefits suits and its prohibition on suits challenging or defending the validity of existing law are "conditions, considerations [and] compensations for each other" that cannot be severed. Congress through the LSC Act intended "to provide high quality legal assistance to those who would be otherwise unable to afford adequate legal counsel," 42 U. S. C. § 2996(2), but only if the program could at the same time "be kept free from the influence of or use by it of political pressures," § 2996(5). More than a dozen times in § 504(a) Congress made the decision that certain activities could not be funded at all without crippling the LSC program with political pressures. See, e. g., § 504(a)(1) (reapportionment litigation); § 504(a)(4) (local, state, and federal lobbying); § 504(a)(7) (class-action lawsuits); § 504(a)(12) (training programs for, inter alia, boycotts, picketing, and demonstrations); § 504(a)(14) (litigation with respect to abortion). The severability question here is, essentially, whether, without the restriction that the Court today invalidates, the permission for conducting welfare litigation would have been accorded. As far as appears from the best evidence (which is the structure of the statute), I think the answer must be no.
We have in some cases stated that when an "excepting proviso is found unconstitutional the substantive provisions which it qualifies cannot stand," for "to hold otherwise would be to extend the scope of the law . . . so as to embrace [situations] which the legislature passing the statute had, by its very terms, expressly excluded." Frost v. Corporation Comm'n of Okla., 278 U.S. 515, 525 (1929); see also Davis v. Wallace, 257 U.S. 478, 484 (1922) ("Where an excepting provision in a statute is found unconstitutional, courts very generally hold that this does not work an enlargement of the scope or operation of other provisions with which that provision was enacted, and which it was intended to qualify or restrain"). I frankly doubt whether this approach has been followed consistently enough to be called the "general" rule, but if there were ever an instance in which it is appropriate it is here. To strike the restriction on welfare benefits suits is to void § 504(a)(16) altogether. Subsection (a)(16) prohibits involvement in three types of activities with respect to welfare reform: lobbying, rulemaking, and litigation. But the proscriptions against using LSC funds to participate in welfare lobbying and rulemaking are superfluous, since as described above subsections (a)(2), (a)(3), and (a)(4) of § 504 withhold LSC funds from those activities generally. What is unique about subsection (a)(16)—the only thing it achieves—is its limit on litigation. To remove that limit is to repeal subsection (a)(16) altogether, and thus to eliminate a significant quid pro quo of the legislative compromise. We have no authority to "rewrite [the] statute and give it an effect altogether different" from what Congress agreed to. Railroad Retirement Bd. v. Alton R. Co., 295 U.S. 330, 362 (1935) (quoted in Carter v. Carter Coal Co., 298 U.S. 238, 313 (1936)).
It is illuminating to speculate how these cases would have been decided if Congress had enacted § 504(a)(16) without its proviso (prescribing only the general ban against "litigation, lobbying, or rulemaking, involving an effort to reform a Federal or State welfare system"), and if the positions of the parties before us here were reversed. If the LSC-funded lawyers were here arguing that the statute permitted representation of individual welfare claimants who did not challenge existing law, I venture to say that the Court would endorse their argument—perhaps with stirring language about the importance of aid to welfare applicants and the Court's unwillingness to presume without clear indication that Congress would want to eliminate it. And I have little doubt that in that context the Court would find its current First Amendment musings as unpersuasive as I find them today.
Today's decision is quite simply inexplicable on the basis of our prior law. The only difference between Rust and the present cases is that the former involved "distortion" of (that is to say, refusal to subsidize) the normal work of doctors, and the latter involves "distortion" of (that is to say, refusal to subsidize) the normal work of lawyers. The Court's decision displays not only an improper special solicitude for our own profession; it also displays, I think, the very fondness for "reform through the courts"—the making of innumerable social judgments through judge-pronounced constitutional imperatives—that prompted Congress to restrict publicly funded litigation of this sort. The Court says today, through an unprecedented (and indeed previously rejected) interpretation of the First Amendment, that we will not allow this restriction—and then, to add insult to injury, permits to stand a judgment that awards the general litigation funding that the statute does not contain. I respectfully dissent.
FootNotes * Together with No. 99-960, United States v. Velazquez et al., also on certiorari to the same court.
† Briefs of amici curiae urging reversal were filed for the Pacific Legal Foundation by John H. Findley; and for the Washington Legal Foundation et al. by Daniel J. Popeo and R. Shawn Gunnarson.
Briefs of amici curiae urging affirmance were filed for the American Civil Liberties Union et al. by Arthur N. Eisenberg and Steven R. Shapiro; and for the New York State Bar Association et al. by Bruce A. Green and Lawrence S. Lustberg. Frederick A. O. Schwarz, Jr., filed a brief for the American Judicature Society as amicus curiae. Comment