Opinion ID: 8414574
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: The Failure to Allege any Burden on First Amendment Rights

Text: Because the law is evolving rapidly with respect to the protections afforded commercial speech by the First Amendment, however, we proceed one step further with our analysis. We turn to addressing whether, to the extent that the J&M Firms could be found to have some degree of First Amendment right to associate with clients or to petition the government through the courts on their clients’ behalf — or could be allowed to challenge the regulations on behalf of their clients — their complaint states a claim. We conclude again, however, that their claims fail because the regulations are supported by substantial government interests and impose an insubstantial burden on the exercise of any such First Amendment rights. The heart of the causal argument is: [The] complaint alleges that several specifically identified non-lawyers stand ready to take equity stakes in [the J&M Firms’] law practice; that such equity will enable [the J&M Firms] to undertake several specific improvements in technology and infrastructure; and that those improvements, by increasing the efficiency of [the J&M Firms’] provision of legal services, will raise even higher the quality of their legal services and lower the cost to clients, thus affecting [ ] the scope, cost, and quality of lawyers’ association with clients for purposes of accessing courts. Appellants’ Br. 28. Taking these projections as accurate, and assuming that the J&M Firms would in fact serve more clients at a lower cost, New York’s regulations proscribing non-lawyer investment in law firms do not impede the lawyers’ constitutionally-shielded ability to associate or petition. We think the only plausible argument that the J&M Firms could have in this vein is that they would be able to and would in fact associate with and serve more needy clients if the regulations are lifted. 8 Any law firm, of course, might like to attract more clients, and any client would like to pay less for his lawyer’s services. But these observations do not mean that regulations that hypothetically and marginally raise the cost of legal services infringe any lawyer’s First Amendment right of association or access to the courts: the connection is simply too attenuated. Indeed, “the broadly formulated First Amendment argument here would, if successful, undermine the power of states to regulate bar membership” and numerous fundamental aspects of the legal profession, “when this power has been repeatedly recognized and upheld by courts.” Russell v. Hug, 275 F.3d 812, 822 (9th Cir. 2002). Many of the rules governing lawyers, such as educational requirements, directly or indirectly affect the cost of legal services. There is no basis for subjecting legislative judgments that balance increased cost against consumer protection to strict judicial scrutiny simply because the business being regulated is the practice of law. Like our sister circuits that have rejected similar Petition Clause challenges to ordinary regulations of the legal profession, we see a marked difference between the regulations at issue here and the state prohibitions on attorney activities that were struck down in Button, Trainmen, and Primus. Unlike in those cases, no attorney here risks censure or sanction for soliciting, meeting with, or representing a client — the activities that can be central to initiating and maintaining the attorney-client relationship. Here, by contrast, the regulations prohibiting non-lawyer investment in law firms simply do “not deny [lawyers] meaningful access to the courts.” Nat’l Ass’n for the Advancement of Multijurisdiction Practice v. Berch, 773 F.3d 1037, 1048 (9th Cir. 2014) (rejecting a challenge to Arizona’s admission-on-motion rule); see Castille, 799 F.3d at 221 (attorney admission reciprocity rule did not violate the Petition Clause, as it was a permissible “exercise of Pennsylvania’s broad power to establish standards for licensing practitioners and regulating the practice of professions” (internal quotation marks omitted)). Like bar admission requirements, the regulations at issue here balance desired limitations on the legal profession that promote quality and ethical lawyering against the necessary increase in the cost of practicing law. Such an increased cost does not implicate the First Amendment, especially where, as here, the law firms in question operate as for-profit businesses. The J&M Firms attempt to analogize this case to United Transportation Union, and argue that if the right of access to the courts “is impermissibly burdened by prohibitions on such mundane activities as transporting clients to attorneys’ offices,” as the Supreme Court found there, then “the same right is surely burdened by impediments to the various specific efficiency-enhancing, price-reducing investments in law-firm infrastructure that, according to [the J&M Firms’] allegations, are obstructed by the challenged statutes and rules.” Appellants’ Br. 11. Their analogy fails to persuade us. The union in United Transportation Union had in fact been enjoined from, among other conduct, receiving any kind of compensation or reimbursement for the time or money spent in putting its members or their families in contact with recommended attorneys — and transporting its members from Michigan to Chicago, where the attorneys were located. United Transp. Union, 401 U.S. at 582, 91 S.Ct. 1076. The Supreme Court struck down the injunction, including the portion related to travel: “Since the members of a union have a First Amendment right to help and advise each other in securing effective legal representation, there can be no doubt that transportation of injured members to an attorney’s office is within the scope of that protected activity. To the extent that the injunction prohibits this practice, it is invalid....” Id. at 582-83, 91 S.Ct. 1076. A court injunction that works to prevent clients from meeting with chosen attorneys at all strikes us as a far cry from state regulations that may at most work slightly, and in conjunction with a host of other factors, to increase the cost of legal services. United Transportation Union provides no reason to abandon our earlier conclusion that the challenged New York laws do not threaten any First Amendment right of the J&M Firms.