Opinion ID: 1887901
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 5

Heading: The scope of the Act

Text: Following its earlier decision in Central Hudson, the Supreme Court recognized in Went For It that a regulation limiting commercial speech must be narrowly drawn to focus upon the substantial interest sought to be served. 515 U.S. at 624, 115 S.Ct. 2371. The Court explained, however, that the phrase narrowly drawn does not require the legislature to select the least restrictive means available. Indeed, the Court stated, the least restrictive means test has no role in the commercial speech context. Id. at 632, 115 S.Ct. 2371 (citation and internal quotation marks omitted). Rather, it is sufficient if the restriction is in proportion to the interest served. [13] Id. We believe that the Act satisfies the requirement of proportionality. The statute challenged here does not prohibit personal solicitation, or even immediate personal solicitation. On the contrary, like the more extensive regulation upheld in Went For It, it imposes only a brief time restriction regarding when and how such solicitation may be carried out. It applies only to the in-person solicitation of business from a limited, and identifiable group of citizens, namely, accident victims and their families. The Act targets and proscribes the precise source of the kinds of problems described in the legislative recordintrusive personal solicitation by practitioners, or their agents or runners, in the immediate aftermath of an accident. The Act can therefore fairly be described as narrowly drawn, and it deals only with the specific harm sought to be addressed. In Went For It, the Court explicitly held that the brief 30-day period prohibiting direct-mail solicitation of accident victims is reasonably well tailored to its stated objective. Id. at 633, 115 S.Ct. 2371. The Court's reasoning applies a fortiori to this case, for the Act prohibits only in-person solicitation (but not direct-mail contact), [14] and the prohibition is for only twenty-one days, a briefer period than was at issue in Went For It. The Act thus constitutes a reasonable means to achieve the legitimate objectives of the Council. [15]
Bergman contends, however, that the Act is aimed at the content of an attorney's speech ( i.e., his or her encouragement of potential clients not to settle their cases immediately without legal counsel) and that it discriminates on the basis of the speaker's viewpoint. We do not agree. The principal inquiry in determining content neutrality . . . is whether the government has adopted a regulation of speech because of a disagreement with the message it conveys. Hill v. Colorado, 530 U.S. 703, 719, 120 S.Ct. 2480, 147 L.Ed.2d 597 (2000) (quoting Ward v. Rock Against Racism, 491 U.S. 781, 791, 109 S.Ct. 2746, 105 L.Ed.2d 661 (1989)). The threshold consideration is the purpose of the restriction. Madsen v. Women's Health Ctr., Inc., 512 U.S. 753, 763, 114 S.Ct. 2516, 129 L.Ed.2d 593 (1994). In the present case, the stated (and obvious) purpose of the Act was to prevent the intrusive solicitation and harassment, often by numerous practitioners or their runners or agents, of individuals who had very recently been involved in automobile accidents, and who were likely to be in vulnerable circumstances. The Act was not aimed at chilling the exercise by accident victims of their right to seek legal redress, and it does not inhibit such exercise. The Council could reasonably conclude that restrictions of in-person solicitation by practitioners were needed more urgently, and should be more severe, than restrictions on insurers and their agents. This is so because, in the absence of legislative protection, the victim of an accident might well be subjected to unwelcome and intrusive contacts from a dozen or more personal injury attorneys, or from persons working on these attorneys' behalf. In most or all instances, on the other hand, only the insurers of the persons involved in the accidentordinarily two at the mostwould have any reason to initiate uninvited contact with the victim. It is difficult to imagine such a victim receiving unwelcome visitors, or intrusive telephone solicitation, from a large number of insurance representatives, in the early hours of the morning or late at night (or at all times in between) in the immediate aftermath of an automobile accident. The record of solicitation of accident victims by multiple practitioners, see Part I, supra, therefore provides persuasive justification for this difference in legislative treatment. The Council was not obliged to accord to practices which constitute a major intrusion on victims' privacy treatment identical to that provided to practices that create a less serious problem. Cf. Capobianco, 377 F.3d at 564-65 (regulation of solicitation by chiropractors but not by medical doctors sustained against equal protection challenge, where there was no evidence that medical doctors engaged in solicitation). The District may, without violating the First Amendment, regulate conduct that accompanies speech, without regard to the content of the speech. R.A.V., 505 U.S. at 385, 112 S.Ct. 2538. Speech may not be proscribed because of the ideas it expresses, but it may be restricted because of the manner in which it is communicated or the action that it entails. Id. The Court recognized in R.A.V., for example, that the legislature has the power to proscribe particular speech on the basis of a noncontent element ( e.g., noise). Id. To be sure, speech may not be denied full First Amendment protection because its content communicates any particular idea. Id. at 393, 112 S.Ct. 2538. Speech may be restricted, however, when it embodies a particular intolerable (and socially unnecessary) mode of expressing whatever idea the speaker wishes to convey. Id. (emphasis in original). The Act was not aimed at the content of a practitioner's speech, but at the offensive behavior that often accompanies its delivery. Legislation aimed at intrusive and exploitive practices cannot reasonably be viewed as siding with insurance companies, or as seeking to inhibit the exercise by accident victims of their right to counsel. The Act does not disapprove any message. As the trial judge concluded, [t]he restriction in the Act is not directed at the legal advice the plaintiff might be seeking to provide to a potential client in the immediate aftermath of a motor vehicle accident, but rather to the nature of the solicitation itself of the client for remuneration.
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.
Bergman complains that the Act provides only fourteen days in which an accident victim may void a release executed during the twenty-one day period in which some in-person solicitation is prohibited. D.C.Code § 22-3225.14(d)(1). He implies that the Council created an illusory remedy for an unrepresented accident victim in order to disguise its true agenda of creating an unfair advantage for insurers and their agents. This suggestion is altogether unpersuasive. We agree with counsel for the Council Members who, relying on Hornstein, 560 A.2d at 533, argue that to lend any credence to the charge that the Council engaged in Machiavellian tactics would turn on its head the mandate that the court presume the validity of the challenged law [19] and the good faith of the legislature in enacting it. The reality is less sinister than Bergman suggests. Members of the Council, like the Supreme Court in Ohralik and Went For It, were aware that even a narrowly drawn proscription against in-person solicitation could lead some accident victims to enter into settlements, or to execute releases from liability, at a time when they were not represented by counsel and did not know their rights. It was for that reason that the Council included in the statute a provision permitting an unrepresented client to rescind such an agreement within fourteen days after executing it. Indeed, in conformity with an amendment proposed by Council Member Kwame Brown, the period was increased from seven business days, as originally proposed, to fourteen calendar days, because [t]he number of days after signing a release without the benefit of legal counsel in which an injured party may exercise the voidability clause should be longer to ensure that the injured party has ample time to exercise that option. In any event, the Act permits direct-mail solicitation by practitioners at any time, and it allows in-person solicitation by practitioners with whom the prospective client has a prior relationship. There is thus no period during which a practitioner is prevented from communicating with the victim of an accident victim. The victim's right to legal representation, if he or she ultimately chooses to employ counsel, is further protected by the requirement that any release contain a notice of the claimant's right to rescind conspicuously and separately stated on the release. D.C.Code § 22-3225.14(d)(2). This is not the stuff of which a perverse hidden agenda to chill victims' exercise of their rights is made. The Council could have, and perhaps should have, given unrepresented victims the full twenty-one days to rescind uncounseled settlements or releases, but this is a question of legislative policy and the Council's decision should not be second-guessed by the judiciary. In sum, we conclude that the Act is a reasonable exercise of the Council's police power, that it does not constitute viewpoint discrimination, and that it is consistent with the First Amendment.