In courtrooms across America, a battle is being waged between state bar associations and attorneys who don’t believe the right to practice law should depend on their willingness to be associated with leftist political candidates and causes.
It’s a classic case of “join or starve,” with many states requiring lawyers to maintain membership in state bar associations, despite — or perhaps because of — the organizations’ increasingly liberal tilt.
In response, the Freedom Foundation has filed an amicus brief with the U.S. Supreme Court in Crowe v. Oregon State Bar, challenging this forced membership arrangement as a flat-out violation of freedom of association.
The argument is straightforward: Lawyers in Oregon are being forced to be members of an organization that spouts political views they reject. The Oregon bar allows dissenting members to apply for a refund of money spent on political speech but maintains the requirement that all active lawyers be members of the association.
The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals recognized there can be a violation of the freedom of expressive association when a group speaks and it’s assumed all members support the position taken. But ultimately, the Ninth Circuit upheld Oregon’s scheme, merely requiring the bar to add a weak disclaimer to indicate that not all members of the bar share its opinion when the bar speaks on a given topic.
But the Freedom Foundation lawsuit argues this misses the point entirely. Forced association itself is the problem.
To understand the gravity of the issue, consider a parallel scenario: Imagine a journalist required to be a member of a media association that consistently promotes views contrary to his or her own, or a teacher forced to support an educational organization that advocates for policies they find deeply problematic.
Can you even contemplate the outrage that would ensue if gun owners had to be members of an organization that actively supported, for example, banning all privately owned guns? Even if the organization made it clear that its position on banning guns is not the position of all its members, the very fact that gun owners must be members would itself violate the First Amendment.
Hellbound and Down 