Opinion ID: 8414574
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: The First Amendment Rights to Petition and Association

Text: The First Amendment prohibits the enactment of any law “abridging ... the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.” U.S. Const, amend. I. The Petition Clause has deep roots in the Anglo-American legal tradition., British subjects enjoyed the right to petition the monarch, and colonial Americans had the right to petition both the British government and local legislative assemblies. McDonald v. Smith, 472 U.S. 479, 482, 105 S.Ct. 2787, 86 L.Ed.2d 384 (1985); James E. Pfander, Sovereign Immunity and the Right to Petition: Toward a First Amendment Right to Pursue Judicial Claims Against the Government, 91 Nw. U.L. Rev. 899, 929-34 (1997). Many state constitutions included the right to petition the legislature even before such a federal right was recognized in the new country’s Constitution. Pfander, 91 Nw. U.L. Rev. at 934-35. Not much detail about the Petition Clause appears, however, in the records of the constitutional debates. See Pfander, 91 Nw. U.L. Rev. at 954-55. The right to associate freely is not mentioned in the text of the First Amendment, but has been derived over time as implicit in and supportive of the rights identified in that amendment. Thus, drawing upon the rights of both petition and expression, the Supreme Court has held that the First Amendment bears on some situations in which clients and attorneys seek each other out to pursue litigation. One line of cases involving political advocacy organizations relies on the expressive value of certain types of associational litigation. In NAACP v. Button for example, the Court held that the NAACP’s work on anti-segregation cases — and the organization’s efforts to recruit plaintiffs for those cases — constituted “modes of expression and association protected by the First and Fourteenth Amendments.” 371 U.S. 415, 428-29, 83 S.Ct. 328, 9 L.Ed.2d 405 (1963). Similarly, in In re Primus, the Court held that an ACLU attorney’s solicitation of a potential client was protected by the First Amendment because “[t]he ACLU engages in litigation as a vehicle for effective political expression and association, as well as a means of communicating useful information to the public.” 436 U.S. 412, 431, 98 S.Ct. 1893, 56 L.Ed.2d 417 (1978). Another line of Supreme Court authority recognizes that clients seeking legal representation — specifically in the context of union activity — have a right protected by the First Amendment to associate with each other to obtain legal representation and vindicate their rights effectively. See, e.g., Bhd. of R.R. Trainmen v. Va. ex rel. Va. State Bar, 377 U.S. 1, 5, 84 S.Ct. 1113, 12 L.Ed.2d 89 (1964) (“Trainmen”). In this vein, the Court has held that “the First Amendment’s guarantees of free speech, petition, and assembly give railroad workers the right to cooperate” to seek legal counsel, and that “collective activity undertaken to obtain meaningful access to the courts is a fundamental right within the protection of the First Amendment.” United Transp. Union v. State Bar of Mich., 401 U.S. 576, 585, 91 S.Ct. 1076, 28 L.Ed.2d 339 (1971). This right has attached to the activities of workers who associate with each other to obtain counsel and further their litigation ends, and to the union as a proxy for the workers in their exercise of associational rights. See United Transp. Union, 401 U.S. at 582, 91 S.Ct. 1076 (“[T]he members of a union have a First Amendment right to help and advise each other in securing effective legal representation .... ”); United Mine Workers of Am., Dist. 12 v. Ill. State Bar Ass’n, 389 U.S. 217, 225, 88 S.Ct. 353, 19 L.Ed.2d 426 (1967) (“The decree at issue here thus substantially impairs the associational rights of the Mine Workers....” (emphasis added)); Trainmen, 377 U.S. at 8, 84 S.Ct. 1113 (“[T]he Constitution protects the associational rights of the members of the union....” (emphasis added)). The Button line of cases might casually be characterized as reflecting lawyers’ expressive rights in the causes they pursue— when those causes implicate expressive values — whereas in the union cases, it is the associational rights of the union members, as clients, that are the focus. The Supreme Court has never held, however, that attorneys have their own First Amendment right as attorneys to associate with current or potential clients, or their own right to petition the government for the redress of their clients’ grievances when the lawyers are acting as advocates for others, and not advocating for their own cause. Although in Trainmen, the Court commented that “lawyers accepting employment under [the unions’] constitutionally protected plan [to recommend specific lawyers] have a like protection which the State cannot abridge,” 377 U.S. at 8, 84 S.Ct. 1113, at most, the comment is dictum. It suggests only that attorneys may not be censured or sanctioned for taking on representation through a union referral program. We think that the comment may not properly be read as recognizing an advocate’s own First Amendment right to associate with prospective clients or to petition the government through access to the courts. In fact, the Court has explicitly distinguished between the First Amendment protections enjoyed by attorneys who, as part of an advocacy group like the ACLU or the NAACP, have recognized associational rights, and attorneys who are engaged in litigation for their own commercial rewards, albeit in the context of advancing or protecting the interests of their clients. In particular, in 1978 the Court issued on a single day decisions in two cases involving state regulation of attorneys, highlighting this distinction. In In re Primus, the Court struck down the South Carolina Supreme Court’s sanction of an ACLU attorney for solicitation of clients, holding that the disciplinary ruling infringed her First Amendment rights. 436 U.S. at 427-28, 98 S.Ct. 1893. In a decision issued in tandem with Pri-mus, Ohralik v. Ohio State Bar Association, 436 U.S. 447, 98 S.Ct. 1912, 56 L.Ed.2d 444 (1978), however, the Court upheld Ohio’s restriction on a private attorney’s solicitation of potential personal injury clients. Distinguishing the pursuit of expressive activity from the pursuit of commercial interests, the Court wrote: Normally the purpose or motive of the speaker is not central to First Amendment protection, but it does bear on the distinction between conduct that is an associational act of expression, and other activity subject to plenary regulation by government. Button recognized that certain forms of cooperative, organizational activity, including litigation, are part of the freedom to engage in association for the advancement of beliefs and ideas, and that this freedom is an implicit guarantee of the First Amendment. As shown above, [the Primus] appellant’s speech — as part of associational activity — was expression intended to advance beliefs and ideas. In Ohralik, the lawyer was not engaged in associational activity for the advancement of beliefs and ideas; his purpose was the advancement of his own commercial interests. The line, based in part on the motive of the speaker and the character of the expressive áctivity, will not always be easy to draw, but that is no reason for avoiding the undertaking. In re Primus, 436 U.S. at 438 n.32, 98 S.Ct. 1893 (internal quotation marks and citations omitted). We embraced that distinction in Board of Education of the City of New York v. Nyquist, where we rejected the argument that any attorney has a First Amendment right to litigate on behalf of a client even when the representation might violate ethical rules. 590 F.2d 1241, 1245 (2d Cir. 1979). Because the attorney in Nyquist was not, as was the lawyer in In re Pri- mus, “encouraging the airing in court of a point of view she believed in,” we concluded that the individual lawyer held no related First Amendment right to represent the clients in a case not raising other First Amendment concerns, Nyquist, 590 F.2d at 1245-46 (citing In re Primus, 436 U.S. at 422, 98 S.Ct. 1893).