Opinion ID: 38
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Central Hudson and the Moratorium Provisions

Text: Plaintiffs' cross-appeal challenges the District Court's decision upholding New York's time-limited moratorium on solicitation of accident victims or their families. In cases where a legal filing is required within thirty days, the moratorium is limited to a fifteen-day cooling off period. Alexander, 634 F.Supp.2d at 253. New York's moratorium provisions apply to all media through which an attorney might initiate communication directed to, or targeted at, a specific recipient or group of recipients. N.Y. Comp.Codes R. & Regs., tit. 22, § 1200.52(b). Consistent with the regulations as written and with counsel's concessions at oral argument, we construe the moratorium provision as inapplicable to (a) broad, generalized mailings (Oral Arg. ~ 12:06:18); (b) general advertisements conveying an attorney's experience in handling personal-injury suits, even when these advertisements appear near news stories in a newspaper that the attorney knows will be filled with coverage of a particular accident (Oral Arg. ~ 12:02:38-12:03:00) [13] ; or (c) advertisements informing readers of an attorney's past experience with a particular product where that product has caused repeated personal-injury problems (as with the Dalkon Shield advertisement at issue in Zauderer ). (Oral Arg. ~ 12:04:11) We turn now to the remaining Central Hudson inquiries relevant to the moratorium provision.
In Florida Bar, the Supreme Court recognized as a substantial state interest protecting the privacy and tranquility of personal injury victims and their loved ones against intrusive, unsolicited contact by lawyers. Florida Bar, 515 U.S. at 624, 115 S.Ct. 2371. That case considered a thirty-day moratorium on direct-mail solicitation of accident victims (or their families). This case similarly involves a moratorium on contacting accident victims (and their families). The Task Force Report, which Defendants considered, recommended a limited moratorium because the cooling off requirement would be beneficial in removing a source of annoyance and offense to those already troubled by an accident or similar occurrence. (Task Force Report 62-63) Florida Bar makes clear that Defendants' stated interest is substantial, and the Task Force Report indicates that that interest is genuinely asserted. The moratorium provisions thus meet the requirements of Central Hudson 's substantial interest prong.
Florida Bar upheld Florida's moratorium rule, which is similar to the New York provisions before us. Several other states have since adopted analogous regulations prohibiting targeted solicitation of accident victims for specific periods of time. [14] The Task Force Report, based in part on the practices of these states, recommended a fifteen-day cooling-off period during which direct-mail solicitation of accident victims would be prohibited. (Task Force Report, App. I, 4) New York's moratorium provisions seek to address the same harms that the Florida Bar Court recognized in upholding a thirty-day ban on direct-mail solicitations. And the New York provisions seek to address those harms through similar means  a time-limited moratorium on targeted solicitation of potential clients. Florida Bar makes clear that such means materially advance the state's interest. We conclude, therefore, that Defendants have met their burden under this prong of Central Hudson. See Moore v. Morales, 63 F.3d 358, 361-62 (5th Cir.1995) (relying largely on Florida Bar in upholding a rule prohibiting attorneys, physicians, and other professionals from soliciting accident victims within thirty days following the accident).
Were New York's moratorium provisions limited to direct-mail solicitation, there would be little question as to their constitutionality. See Falanga v. State Bar of Georgia, 150 F.3d 1333, 1340-41 (11th Cir.1998). But New York's moratorium is not so limited. As the District Court recognized, The moratorium provisions in this case extend by their plain language to television, radio, newspaper, and website solicitations that are directed to or targeted at a specific recipient or group of recipients. Alexander, 634 F.Supp.2d at 253. The Supreme Court has in some circumstances favored a technology-specific approach to the First Amendment. See United States v. Playboy Entm't Group, Inc., 529 U.S. 803, 813, 120 S.Ct. 1878, 146 L.Ed.2d 865 (2000) (Cable television, like broadcast media, presents unique problems, which inform our assessment of the interests at stake, and which may justify restrictions that would be unacceptable in other contexts.); Reno v. ACLU, 521 U.S. 844, 868, 117 S.Ct. 2329, 138 L.Ed.2d 874 (1997) ([E]ach medium of expression may present its own problems. (quotation marks and alteration omitted)); FCC v. League of Women Voters of Ca., 468 U.S. 364, 377, 104 S.Ct. 3106, 82 L.Ed.2d 278 (1984) ([W]e have recognized that `differences in the characteristics of new media justify differences in the First Amendment standards applied to them.' (quoting Red Lion Broad. Co. v. FCC, 395 U.S. 367, 386, 89 S.Ct. 1794, 23 L.Ed.2d 371 (1969))). [15] Different media may present unique attributes that merit a tailored First Amendment analysis. But see Jim Chen, Conduit-Based Regulation of Speech, 54 Duke L.J. 1359, 1360 (2005) ([A] constitutional jurisprudence that minimizes reliance on conduit-based distinctions best protects free speech.). But the differences among media may or may not be relevant to the First Amendment analysis depending on the challenged restrictions. Compare Sable Commc'ns of Ca., Inc. v. FCC, 492 U.S. 115, 128, 109 S.Ct. 2829, 106 L.Ed.2d 93 (1989) (Unlike an unexpected outburst on a radio broadcast, the message received by one who places a call to a dial-a-porn service is not so invasive or surprising that it prevents an unwilling listener from avoiding exposure to it.), with Reno, 521 U.S. at 875-76, 117 S.Ct. 2329 (likening regulations seeking to protect minors from harmful material on the Internet to regulations on obscene commercial telephone recordings), and Sable Commc'ns, 492 U.S. at 125, 109 S.Ct. 2829 (likening obscene commercial telephone recordings to obscene commercial mailings); cf. Shapero v. Ky. Bar Ass'n, 486 U.S. 466, 473, 108 S.Ct. 1916, 100 L.Ed.2d 475 (1988) (Our lawyer advertising cases have never distinguished among various modes of written advertising to the general public.). In the context before us, we eschew a technology-specific approach to the First Amendment and conclude that New York's moratorium provisions  as we construe them  survive constitutional scrutiny notwithstanding their applicability across the technological spectrum. We focus first on the potential differences among media as to the degree of affirmative action needed to be taken by the targeted recipient to receive the material Plaintiffs seek to send. For many media forms, it is about the same. Thus, to us, the affirmative act of walking to one's mailbox and tearing open a letter seems no greater than walking to one's front step and picking up the paper or turning on a knob on a television or radio. It is true that the Internet may appear to require more affirmative acts on the part of the user in order to recover content (and is therefore perhaps entitled to greater First Amendment protection insofar as users are soliciting information, rather than being solicited). But regardless of whether this characterization was once accurate, it no longer is so. E-mail has replaced letters; newspapers are often read online; radio streams online; television programming is broadcast on the Web; and the Internet can be connected to television. See Christopher S. Yoo, The Rise and Demise of the Technology-Specific Approach to the First Amendment, 91 Geo. L.J. 245, 248 (2003) ([T]he impending shift of all networks to packet switched technologies promises to cause all of the distinctions based on the means of conveyance and the type of speech conveyed to collapse entirely.). Furthermore, Internet searches do not bring a user immediately to the desired result without distractions. Advertisements may appear with the user's search results; pop-up ads appear on web pages; and Gmail (Google's e-mail service) creates targeted advertising based on the keywords used in one's e-mail. In such a context, an accident victim who describes her experience in an e-mail might very well find an attorney advertisement targeting victims of the specific accident on her computer screen. [16] States are increasingly responding to these expanded and expanding roles of the Internet. Several already apply existing attorney professional responsibility rules to electronic and Internet advertisements and solicitations. See Amy Haywood & Melissa Jones, Navigating a Sea of Uncertainty: How Existing Ethical Guidelines Pertain to the Marketing of Legal Services over the Internet, 14 Geo. J. Legal Ethics, 1099, 1113 (2001) ([I]t can be assumed that Internet use in the context of legal marketing will generally invoke all ethics rules relating to advertising and solicitation.). [17] Texas and Florida have also added language to their disciplinary rules specifically to address attorney solicitation via the Internet. [18] The New York Task Force Report reached the same conclusion. The Report repeatedly stated that on-line advertisements and websites are not materially different than typical printed advertisements, and that the rules should be enforced equally across media. (Task Force Report 54-55) In so doing, the Report demonstrate[d] that the harms it recites are real and its restriction will in fact alleviate them to a degree. Florida Bar, 515 U.S. at 626, 115 S.Ct. 2371 (quotation marks omitted). Accordingly, we conclude that even acknowledging that differences among media may be significant in some First Amendment analyses, they are not so in this case. Three aspects of the Supreme Court's analysis in Florida Bar are of particular relevance to our determination that the harms identified in that case, and put forth by Defendants in this case, are just as compelling with respect to targeted attorney advertisements on television, radio, newspapers, and the Internet as they are in justifying a ban on targeted mailings of attorney advertisements.
The Supreme Court has recognized the particular sensitivity of people to targeted (plaintiff's) attorney advertisements during periods of trauma. To the extent that the attorney advertisements, regardless of the media through which they are communicated, are directed toward the same sensitive people, there is no reason to distinguish among the mode of communication. Depending on the individual recipient, the printed word may be a likely to offend as images on a screen or in newspapers. In Florida Bar, the Court recognized the state's substantial interest ... in protecting injured Floridians from invasive conduct by lawyers. 515 U.S. at 635, 115 S.Ct. 2371. As the dissent in Florida Bar pointed out, the primary distinction between the targeted letters at issue in Florida Bar and the untargeted letters at issue in Shapero v. Kentucky Bar Association, 486 U.S. 466, 108 S.Ct. 1916, 100 L.Ed.2d 475 (1988), was that victims or their families will be offended by receiving a [targeted] solicitation during their grief and trauma. Florida Bar, 515 U.S. at 638, 115 S.Ct. 2371. The dissent argued that the majority should not allow restrictions on speech to be justified on the ground that the expression might offend the listener. Id. But the majority of the Supreme Court in Florida Bar held otherwise. It focused on a subset of the public in analyzing the First Amendment: essentially, a First Amendment analogue to tort law's thin-skull plaintiffs, those who have a porcelain heart. Some accident victims and their families might welcome targeted solicitations that inform them of their legal rights immediately after the accident (particularly when insurance companies may already be knocking on their doors). Other accident victims and their families might be perturbed  but not outraged  by the targeted solicitations. The Supreme Court, however, tailored First Amendment law, in the context of attorney solicitations, to the most sensitive members of the public. It is with these porcelain hearts in mind that we must evaluate New York's moratorium.
In addition to a heightened concern for public sensitivity to potentially offensive attorney communications, the Court in Florida Bar upheld the moratorium in part because of its belief that people should be given more of an option to avoid offensive speech in the privacy of their homes. See Florida Bar, 515 U.S. at 625, 115 S.Ct. 2371 ([W]e have consistently recognized that the State's interest in protecting the well-being, tranquility, and privacy of the home is certainly of the highest order in a free and civilized society. (quotation marks and alterations omitted)). In this respect, the Court was adhering to a long-held position: One important aspect of residential privacy is protection of the unwilling listener. Although in many locations, we expect individuals simply to avoid speech they do not want to hear, the home is different. That we are often `captives' outside the sanctuary of the home and subject to objectionable speech ... does not mean we must be captives everywhere. Rowan v. U.S. Post Office Dep't, 397 U.S. 728, 738, 90 S.Ct. 1484, 1491, 25 L.Ed.2d 736 (1970). Instead, a special benefit of the privacy all citizens enjoy within their own walls, which the State may legislate to protect, is an ability to avoid intrusions. Thus, we have repeatedly held that individuals are not required to welcome unwanted speech into their own homes and that the government may protect this freedom. Frisby v. Schultz, 487 U.S. 474, 484-85, 108 S.Ct. 2495, 101 L.Ed.2d 420 (1988) (some internal citations omitted); Rowan v. U.S. Post Office Dep't, 397 U.S. 728, 737, 90 S.Ct. 1484, 25 L.Ed.2d 736 (The ancient concept that `a man's home is his castle' into which `not even the king may enter' has lost none of its vitality, and none of the recognized exceptions includes any right to communicate offensively with another.). In Rowan, the Supreme Court categorically reject[ed] the argument that a vendor has a right under the Constitution or otherwise to send unwanted material into the home of another, and held that [t]he asserted right of a mailer ... stops at the outer boundary of every person's domain. Id. at 738, 90 S.Ct. 1484. Yet, a letter in a mailbox is no more intrusive than the newspaper in the mailbox, the e-mail in one's inbox, the television in the living room, the radio in the kitchen, or the Internet in the study. Arguably, mail is directly targeted at a residence, whereas television, radio, and the Internet may be viewed outside the home. But the Court has seemingly not focused on this distinction, and, instead, has held that the home should be protected from offensive language that disturbs domestic tranquility through the airwaves: Patently offensive, indecent material presented over the airwaves confronts the citizen, not only in public, but also in the privacy of the home, where the individual's right to be left alone plainly outweighs the First Amendment rights of an intruder. Because the broadcast audience is constantly tuning in and out, prior warnings cannot completely protect the listener or viewer from unexpected program content. To say that one may avoid further offense by turning off the radio when he hears indecent language is like saying that the remedy for an assault is to run away after the first blow. One may hang up on an indecent phone call, but that option does not give the caller a constitutional immunity or avoid a harm that has already taken place. FCC v. Pacifica Found., 438 U.S. 726, 748-49, 98 S.Ct. 3026, 57 L.Ed.2d 1073 (1978) (internal citation omitted) (upholding the FCC's regulation of radio broadcast); cf. Rowan, 397 U.S. at 736-37, 90 S.Ct. 1484 ([A] mailer's right to communicate must stop at the mailbox of an unreceptive addressee.). Once again, we find no reason to distinguish among these media for our First Amendment analysis.
Finally, Florida Bar recognized the state's substantial interest ... in preventing the erosion of confidence in the [legal] profession that ... repeated invasions [of privacy by lawyers] have engendered. 515 U.S. at 635, 115 S.Ct. 2371. The Florida Bar court distinguished between two kinds of direct-mail advertisements: (1) those that cause offense to the recipient and whose harm can be eliminated by a brief journey to the trash can, id. at 631, 115 S.Ct. 2371; see also Bolger, 463 U.S. 60, 103 S.Ct. 2875, 77 L.Ed.2d 469 (rejecting federal ban on direct-mail advertisements for contraceptives), and (2) those whose harmful effects extend beyond the recipient by, for example, tarnishing the reputation of a professional group. See Florida Bar, 515 U.S. at 631, 115 S.Ct. 2371 (The Bar is concerned not with citizens' `offense' in the abstract, but with the demonstrable detrimental effects that such `offense' has on the profession it regulates. Moreover, the harm posited by the Bar is as much a function of simple receipt of targeted solicitations within days of accidents as it is a function of the letters' contents. Throwing the letter away shortly after opening it may minimize the latter intrusion, but it does little to combat the former. (internal citations omitted)). A solicitation that offends is not likely to be any less detrimental to the reputation of lawyers when spoken aloud, displayed on a computer screen, or conveyed by television. Accordingly, we conclude that ads targeting certain accident victims that are sent by television, radio, newspapers, or the Internet are more similar to direct-mail solicitations, which can properly be prohibited within a limited time frame, than to an untargeted letter mailed to society at large, which involves no willful or knowing affront to or invasion of the tranquility of bereaved or injured individuals and simply does not cause the same kind of reputational harm to the profession as direct mail solicitations. Florida Bar, 515 U.S. at 630, 115 S.Ct. 2371. Moreover, we do not find constitutional fault with the 30-day time period during which attorneys may not solicit potential clients in a targeted fashion. As with Florida Bar 's short temporal ban, New York's moratorium permits attorneys to advertise to the general public their expertise with personal injury or wrongful death claims. It thereby fosters reaching the accident victims, so long as these victims are not specifically targeted. It further allows accident victims to initiate contact with attorneys even during the thirty days following an accident. See Florida Bar, 515 U.S. at 633, 115 S.Ct. 2371. In fact, as amici New York State Bar Association point out, New York's moratorium is more narrowly tailored than that of Florida Bar insofar as it incorporates the Task Force Report's fifteen-day black-out period, which shortens the moratorium period to fifteen days where an attorney or law firm must make a filing within thirty days of an incident as a legal prerequisite to a particular claim. N.Y. Comp.Codes R. & Regs., tit. 22, §§ 1200.52(e), 1200.36(a), 1200.36(b). No doubt the statute could have been more precisely drawn, but it need not be perfect or the least restrictive means to pass constitutional muster. Bd. of Trustees of State Univ. of N.Y. v. Fox, 492 U.S. 469, 480, 109 S.Ct. 3028, 106 L.Ed.2d 388 (1989). New York's moratorium provisions prohibit targeted communications by lawyers to victims, their families, or their representatives as to a specific personal injury or wrongful death event, where such communications occur within thirty days of the incident in question. Where a legal filing is required within thirty days, the moratorium is limited to fifteen days. These provisions, although they reach a broader range of advertisements than those proscribed by the moratorium in Florida Bar, do not impose barriers inconsistent with the First Amendment. We conclude that the moratorium provisions, as construed, are sufficiently narrowly tailored to survive constitutional scrutiny.