Forty years ago, give or take, the State of Maine created a program whose purpose was to create a slush fund to provide legal services to people who could not afford them. Interest earned on Lawyer’s Trust fund accounts (IOLTA) is pooled, and the fund is dispersed to pay for lawyers fees. The Maine Justice Foundation was created to manage the funds and disbursements. Last week, a lawsuit was filed “claiming (IOLTA) program, alleging it violates the First and Fourteenth Amendment rights of lawyers and their clients.”
The plaintiffs are suing several state entities, including the Chief Justice of the Maine Supreme Judicial Court, the State Court Administrator, the Maine Justice Foundation, and the Maine Board of Overseers of the Bar. According to the complaint, the mandatory IOLTA program requires lawyers to place client funds in accounts where the interest generated is used to fund various legal services organizations. The plaintiffs argue this violates their constitutional rights by compelling them to financially support speech and advocacy they disagree with.
“This case concerns the well-established right of the public, under the First and Fourteenth Amendments to the United States Constitution, to be free from the tyranny of compelled speech,” the complaint states. The plaintiffs further allege that the interest accrued on client funds, which would otherwise benefit the clients, is being used to support organizations with political and ideological stances contrary to their beliefs.
It sounds a bit like the basis behind Janus, which was brought by members of unions whose dues were used in opposition to their political beliefs. They wanted the freedom to not pay for that activity, and the US Supreme Court ultimately agreed. The question in Maine is how captured the courts and the Bar Association are and whether the challengers have the finances and energy to take this as far as it may need to go.
In New Hampshire, if you rub the system the wrong way often enough, they’ll find a way to remove the problem—and without much remorse, given that the mask lawsuits were justified and turned out to be both the right side of law and public health. I don’t expect Maine to be much different, though imagining theirs could be as broken is difficult. We shall soon see.
