Whether Congress may fund lawyers to represent clients in individual welfare-benefits suits while barring those lawyers from challenging the validity of existing welfare laws.
Holding
No. The restriction violated the First Amendment, and the Court affirmed the injunction against it.
Reasoning
Congress may choose which activities to fund and may control the message conveyed through a government program. But LSC lawyers do not deliver a government message: they exercise independent judgment and speak for private clients, often in claims against the government. That distinguishes this program from the government-funded counseling restrictions upheld in Rust v. Sullivan.
The condition allowed lawyers to seek benefits under existing law while excluding arguments that the law itself was invalid. It thus suppressed a vital category of arguments within the litigation Congress chose to fund, rather than simply declining to fund a separate kind of legal service.
The restriction also interfered with the ordinary work of lawyers and courts. An LSC lawyer who encountered a validity question had to withdraw and could not even answer a judge’s question about a constitutional concern. Courts depend on independent advocates to present well-grounded arguments needed to decide cases.
Withdrawal was not an adequate substitute for allowing the argument. Clients qualified for LSC help because they could not afford counsel, and they were unlikely to find another lawyer to pursue the challenge. Congress could limit the range of cases it funded, but it could not use this condition to shield existing welfare laws from legal challenge in the benefits suits it did fund.