holding that a Virginia solicitation law, which prohibited organizations like the N.A.A.C.P. from finding or retaining lawyers for individual litigants and paying those attorneys a per diem fee for their professional services, violated the First Amendment because the state had not advanced any substantial regulatory interest to justify the prohibition
How later courts described this case
- holding that a Virginia solicitation law, which prohibited organizations like the N.A.A.C.P. from finding or retaining lawyers for individual litigants and paying those attorneys a per diem fee for their professional services, violated the First Amendment because the state had not advanced any substantial regulatory interest to justify the prohibition
- holding that the United States Supreme Court’s jurisdiction over the judgment of the Virginia Supreme Court on the plaintiffs federal claims was proper, despite the fact that a district court had retained jurisdiction over those same claims pursuant to a Pullman remand order
- recognizing standing on the NAACP’s own behalf and representational standing in action seeking to declare unconstitutional statutes that forbade the NAACP from funding litigation in order *452 to assist parties in asserting their constitutional rights
- recognizing the application of over-breadth doctrine to state laws and explaining that, “[b]ecause First Amendment freedoms need breathing space to survive, government may regulate in the area only with narrow specificity”
Written by the judges who cited it.
Distinguished
Distinguished by Siblerud v. Colorado State Bd. of Agriculture, 896 F. Supp. 1506 (1995)
As Siblerud's First Amendment claim does not involve legislative rules or regulations of speech, Button is inapposite.[31]
Distinguished by In Re Primus, 436 U.S. 412 (1978)
The dissent of Mr. Justice RehNQuist suggests that Button is distinguishable from this case because there “lawyers played only a limited role” in the solicitation of prospective litigants, and “the Commonwealth did not attempt to discipline the individual lawyers . . . .
The opinion
Mr. Justice Douglas,
concurring.
While I join the opinion of the Court, I add a few words. This Virginia Act is not applied across the board to all groups that use this method of obtaining and managing litigation, but instead reflects a legislative purpose to penalize the N. A. A. C. P. because it promotes desegregation of the races. Our decision in Brown v. Board of Education, 347 U. S. 483 , holding that maintenance of public schools segregated by race violated the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, was announced May 17, 1954. The amendments to Virginia’s code, here in issue, were enacted in 1956. Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Mississippi, South Carolina, and Tennessee * also passed laws following our 1954 decision which brought within their barratry statutes attorneys paid by an organization such as the N. A. A. C. P. and representing litigants without charge.
The bill, here involved, was one of five that Virginia enacted “as parts of the general plan of massive resistance to the integration of schools of the state under the Supreme Court’s decrees.” Those are the words of Judge Soper, writing for the court in N. A. A. C. P. v. Patty, 159 F. Supp. 503 , 515. He did not indulge in guesswork. He *446 reviewed the various steps taken by Virginia to resist our Brown decision, starting with the Report of the Gray Commission on November 11,1955. Id., at 512 . He mentioned the “interposition resolution” passed by the General Assembly on February 1, 1956, the constitutional amendment made to carry out the recommendation of the Report of the Gray Commission, and the address of the Governor before the General Assembly that enacted the five laws, including the present one. Id., at 513-515 . These are too lengthy to repeat here. But they make clear the purpose of the present law — as clear a purpose to evade our prior decisions as was the legislation in Lane v. Wilson, 307 U. S. 268 , another instance of a discriminatory state law. The fact that the contrivance used is subtle and indirect is not material to the question. “The Amendment nullifies sophisticated as well as simpleminded modes of discrimination.” Id., at 275 . There we looked to the origins of the state law and the setting in which it operated to find its discriminatory nature. It is proper to do the same here.
Discrimination also appears on the face of this Act. The line drawn in § 54-78 is between an organization which has “no pecuniary right or liability” in a judicial proceeding and one that does. As we said in N. A. A. C. P. v. Alabama, 357 U. S. 449, 459 , the N. A. A. C. P. and its members are “in every practical sense identical. The Association ... is but the medium through which its individual members seek to make more effective the expression of their own views.” Under the statute those who protect a “pecuniary right or liability” against unconstitutional invasions may indulge in “the solicitation . . . of business for . . . [an] attorney,” while those who protect other civil rights may not. This distinction helps make clear the purpose of the legislation, which, as Judge Soper said, was part of the program of “massive resistance” against Brown v. Board of Education, supra.
Ark. Stat. Ann., 1947 (Cum. Supp. 1961), §§41-703 to 41-713; Fla. Stat. Ann., 1944 (Cum. Supp. 1962), §§877.01 to 877.02; Ga. Code Ann., 1953 (Cum. Supp. 1961), §§ 26-4701, 26-4703; Miss. Code Ann., 1956, §§2049-01 to 2049-08; S. C. Code, 1952 (Cum. Supp. 1960), §§56-147 to 56-147.6; Tenn. Code Ann., 1956 (Cum. Supp. 1962), §§ 39-3405 to 39-3410.