Opinion ID: 1887901
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Speech and Verbal Conduct

Text: 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.