Opinion ID: 1887901
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Viewpoint Discrimination

Text: Bergman contends that the Act does not subject insurance agents, adjusters, and attorneys for prospective defendants to the same restrictions as it imposes on practitioners, and that under the Act, the limitation of speech depends on whether the speaker advocates early and uncounseled settlement (which, according to Bergman, is accorded favorable treatment by the Act) or litigation (which, Bergman suggests, the Act disfavors). Bergman argues that this allegedly disparate treatment constitutes viewpoint discrimination, and that his claim is not foreclosed by the Supreme Court's rejection of First Amendment challenges in Ohralik and Went For It because, according to Bergman, these decisions did not address the point. We do not agree. In Ohralik, the Court held that the State . . . constitutionally may discipline a lawyer for soliciting clients in person, for pecuniary gain, under circumstances likely to pose dangers that the State has a right to prevent. 436 U.S. at 449, 98 S.Ct. 1912. The Court explained that in-person solicitation of professional employment by a lawyer does not stand on a par with truthful advertising about the availability and terms of routine legal services, let alone with forms of speech more traditionally within the concern of the First Amendment. ... To require a parity of constitutional protection for commercial and noncommercial speech alike could invite dilution ... of the Amendment's guarantee with respect to the latter kind of speech. Id. at 455-56, 98 S.Ct. 1912. The State does not lose its power to regulate commercial activity deemed harmful to the public whenever speech is a component of that activity. Id. at 456, 98 S.Ct. 1912. While this does not remove the speech from the protection of the First Amendment... it lowers the level of appropriate judicial scrutiny. Id. As the trial judge in this case noted in her opinion, the Supreme Court explained in Ohralik, 436 U.S. at 457, 98 S.Ct. 1912, that [i]n-person solicitation by a lawyer of remunerative employment is a business transaction in which speech is an essential but subordinate component. Bergman argues that the Court's holding in Ohralik was based on a perceived presumption of even-handed enforcement as between practitioners and insurers. In so claiming, Bergman attributes to the Court a view that the Court did not express or hold. To be sure, the Court observed, in a footnote, that while recognizing the importance of the State's interest in regulating solicitation of paying clients by lawyers, we are not unmindful of the problem of the related practice ... of the solicitation of releases of liability by claims agents or adjusters of prospective defendants or their insurers. Id. at 459 n. 16, 98 S.Ct. 1912. But recognizing the existence of this problem did not negate the Court's basic holding. Indeed, the Court was fully aware, when it upheld, against a First Amendment challenge, a ban on in-person solicitation by lawyers, that the prohibition which it sustained did not apply to the practices of insurers or their representatives. There is nothing in the Court's opinion in Ohralik which suggests that the outcome of that case is dependent on the extent of regulation by the state of the practices of insurance agents or adjusters, or of attorneys for prospective defendants. Bergman also asserts that Went For It is distinguishable because, according to him, no claim of viewpoint discrimination was raised in that case. Once again, we do not agree. In Went For It, as we have seen, the Supreme Court held that a Florida Bar rule prohibiting personal injury lawyers from sending targeted direct-mail solicitations to victims and their relatives for thirty days following an accident did not violate the First or Fourteenth Amendments. 515 U.S. at 620, 115 S.Ct. 2371. The Court explicitly recognized that the rule which it sustained as constitutional may prevent citizens from learning about their legal options, particularly at a time when other actors  opposing counsel and insurance adjusters  may be clamoring for the victim's attention.  Id. at 633, 115 S.Ct. 2371 (emphasis added). The Court declined, however, to invalidate the Florida rule on the basis of these concerns, noting that the rule imposed only a limited restriction on the practices of personal injury lawyers and that there were many other ways in which accident victims could learn of the availability of legal representation, including advertising in the media, in the Yellow Pages, and in other directories. Id. at 633-34, 115 S.Ct. 2371. [16] The opinions in Ohralik and Went For It establish beyond peradventure that in both cases, the Supreme Court recognized the concerns which Bergman has expressed here, but rejected the notion that real or perceived regulatory inequality as between practitioners and insurers nullifies the authority of the state to restrict intrusive personal solicitation by practitioners and their agents, even where, as in Went For It, the proscribed solicitation was less intrusive than the practices at issue here. The Act, as we have noted, renders any release of liability executed within twenty-one days of an accident, without the benefit of legal counsel, voidable within fourteen days, and it requires that a release contain a conspicuous and separately stated notice of the releasing party's right to rescind. D.C.Code § 22-3225.14(d). In our view, this provision provides reasonable and constitutionally adequate protection to consumers from overreaching by insurers and their agents. Although articulated differently, Bergman's claim of viewpoint discrimination is similar in principle to the unsuccessful argument in Capobianco, to the effect that a prohibition against solicitation which applied to chiropractors but not to medical doctors denied chiropractors the equal protection of the law. Presumably, a chiropractor who solicits a patient's business advocates that the patient be treated by a chiropractor, whereas a hypothetical doctor who engages in such activity advocates medical treatment. Nevertheless, the court in Capobianco sustained the challenged regulation because there was evidence that chiropractors engaged in solicitation, to the detriment of prospective patients, while there was no comparable record of objectionable solicitation by medical doctors. Capobianco, 377 F.3d at 564-65. Bergman's claim in this case likewise fails, in part for a similar reason. The intrusive conduct that has caused the harm at which the Act is aimed is that of practitioners and their agents and runners, and it is the intrusion, and not the message, at which the Act is aimed. Bergman argues, and we agree, that [v]iewpoint discrimination is... an egregious form of content discrimination. The government must abstain from regulating speech when the specific motivating ideology or the opinion or perspective of the speaker is the rationale for the restriction. Rosenberger v. Rector and Visitors of the Univ. of Virginia, 515 U.S. 819, 829, 115 S.Ct. 2510, 132 L.Ed.2d 700 (1995); see also Legal Servs. Corp. v. Velazquez, 531 U.S. 533, 541-42, 121 S.Ct. 1043, 149 L.Ed.2d 63 (2001). But read as a whole, the Act is demonstrably aimed at unwanted and intrusive in-person contacts, rather than at any specific motivating ideology or particular viewpoint. This is evident from what is permitted and what is forbidden. The Council restricted in-person solicitation by practitioners who do not have preexisting relationships with victims of accidents, but the Act permits persons who do have such relationships  whether they are insurers or their agents or practitioners who represent victims  to initiate such contacts. D.C.Code § 22-3225.14(a)(1) & (2). The obvious justification for this distinction is that a communication from a person with whom the victim has a prior relationship is less likely to be harassing, exploitive, or intrusive than an unsolicited contact from someone whom the victim does not know. Thus, because the Act is directed at intrusive practices, and not at any viewpoint, the Council's different treatment of different problems does not render it invalid. A regulation that serves purposes unrelated to the content of expression is deemed neutral, even if it has an incidental effect on some speakers or messages but not others. Rock Against Racism, 491 U.S. at 791, 109 S.Ct. 2746. Moreover, as we have noted, the demonstrated need for protection from uninvited visits or telephone calls by numerous practitioners and their agents substantially outweighs any perceived necessity for restricting unwanted contacts initiated in a given case by, at most, one or two insurers. In R.A.V., on which Bergman relies, the Court held that a St. Paul, Minnesota ordinance which prohibited the display of any symbol which arouses anger, alarm or resentment in others on the basis of race, color, creed, religion or gender violated the First Amendment. 505 U.S. at 380, 112 S.Ct. 2538. The Court reasoned that by linking the offensive display or symbol to the five enumerated categories, St. Paul had imposed special prohibitions on those speakers who express views on disfavored subjects. Id. at 391, 112 S.ct. 2538. Moreover, the Court concluded, unsurprisingly, that the primary effect of the ordinance was to regulate speech. Id. at 394, 112 S.Ct. 2538. But the Court also reiterated that commercial speech receives less protection than political speech, [17] noting that a State may choose to regulate price advertising in one industry but not in others, because the risk of fraud (one of the characteristics of commercial speech that justifies depriving it of full First Amendment protection) is in its view greater. Id. at 388, 112 S.Ct. 2538. In Went For It, decided three years after R.A.V., the Court upheld, against a First Amendment challenge, a Florida regulation, similar to, though more restrictive than, the Act,  a result that the Court could not have reached if the decision in R.A.V. compelled the conclusion that in-person solicitation of accident victims constitutes activity protected by the First Amendment. 515 U.S. at 620, 115 S.Ct. 2371. [18] Complaining of the Act's restriction on practitioners' access to police reports unless they agree to abide by the twenty-one-day restriction on some in-person solicitation, Bergman argues that the government violates the First Amendment when it denies access to a speaker solely to suppress the point of view he espouses. Cornelius v. NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, Inc., 473 U.S. 788, 806, 105 S.Ct. 3439, 87 L.Ed.2d 567 (1985). We agree without reservation with the principle articulated in Cornelius, but we do not believe that it has any bearing on this case. The Act was not designed solely, or even partially, to suppress a viewpoint that Bergman espouses. Rather, it protects accident victims from intrusive conduct designed to induce them to enter into a commercial transaction with the practitioner who is engaging in the solicitation.