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SOUTHEAST TEXAS RECORD

Thursday, March 28, 2024

State of Texas backs attorneys in legal battle over mandatory bar dues currently before SCOTUS

Federal Court
Scotus

WASHINGTON - The state of Texas has sided against the State Bar of Texas, filing a brief in support of a trio of attorneys asking the U.S. Supreme Court to hold that members of a mandatory bar cannot be compelled to finance any political or ideological activities with their dues. 

In the past week, more than a half dozen amicus briefs have been filed in support of the attorneys, who filed their petition for writ of certiorari on Nov. 24, court records show. 

Through Attorney General Ken Paxton, Texas filed its brief on Jan. 19, seeking to “promote its interests and those of its citizens in ensuring that the actions and policies of governmental entities such as respondents comport with the First Amendment.” 

“Texas also has a legitimate interest in ensuring that members of the legal profession retain their independence and thus their ability to maintain the high ethical standards required of their profession,” the brief states. “Those interests are implicated here.

“Individuals in the legal profession should not be forced to support the political and ideological causes that bar associations so commonly take on themselves.”  

Texas is urging the high court to require mandatory bar associations to implement an “op-in” rule for speech subsidies.  

The Texas State Bar’s Board of Directors, on the other hand, is arguing the First Amendment’s free speech clause doesn’t apply to its activities. 

On Dec. 30, the voting members of Board filed a conditional cross-petition for a writ of certiorari with the Supreme Court, questioning whether the Texas Bar, which is “a public corporation and an administrative agency of the judicial department of [the Texas] government,” qualifies as a government agency for purposes of the government speech doctrine, such that its speech is “not subject to scrutiny under the [First Amendment’s] Free Speech Clause.”

“This Court’s subsequent case law demonstrates that the State Bar of Texas’s speech is government speech, so ‘the Free Speech Clause has no application’ to the Bar’s expressive activities— wholly undermining the basis for the plaintiffs’ First Amendment claims,” the Board’s petition states. 

Case Background

The legal battle over mandatory bar dues in Texas has been waged for the past three years. 

The challenge was brought by attorneys Tony McDonald, Joshua Hammer and Mark Pulliam, who sued the Board of Directors for the State Bar of Texas alleging First Amendment rights violations under Janus v. AFSCME – a 2018 Supreme Court decision that found that millions of public servants no longer have to pay a government union as a condition of employment.

A federal judge granted the Board summary judgment and the case ended up before the U.S. Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals.

“In sum, the Bar is engaged in non-germane activities, so compelling the plaintiffs to join it violates their First Amendment rights,” the Fifth Circuit’s opinion states.

The attorneys’ petition for writ of certiorari states that the Fifth Circuit correctly held that they could not be compelled to support the Bar’s political advocacy in matters unrelated to the legal profession, but found itself constrained by a Supreme Court precedent (Keller v. State Bar of California) to reject their First Amendment challenges to all of the other activities at issue because they were germane.

“This  Court  should  grant  certiorari  and  hold  that members of a mandatory bar cannot be compelled to finance any political or ideological activities, and cannot be compelled to join a bar that engages in such activities,” the petition states. “Although Keller did contemplate a limited role for a mandatory bar whose activities are carefully circumscribed, nothing in Keller gives bar associations a blank check to use coerced dues to support highly controversial and ideologically charged activities such as those challenged here.” 

In its petition, the Bar states that this case provides a suitable vehicle for reconsidering Keller’s refusal to apply the government speech doctrine to integrated bars. 

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