FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Washington, DC – Over a dozen advocacy groups and individuals filed amicus briefs in Greenberg v. Lehocky, Appellate Case No. 22-1733 (3rd. Cir.), Pennsylvania’s attempt to overrule HLLI’s victory enjoining the state’s unconstitutional regulation of attorney speech, Rule 8.4(g). HLLI challenged Rule 8.4(g) on behalf of attorney Zachary Greenberg, a Pennsylvania-licensed attorney working for a non-profit organization that advocates on behalf of students’ constitutional rights and regularly speaks at legal education and other professional events on a variety of hot-button legal issues.
Rule 8.4(g) threatened to impose civil and professional sanction on Greenberg and other Pennsylvania attorneys if someone hearing their speech misconstrued it as a manifestation of bias or prejudice and registered a complaint with the Office of Disciplinary Counsel. Rule 8.4(g) did not clearly define “bias or prejudice,” but it did penalize the use of “words” that supposedly manifest bias or prejudice. After twice defeating the rule, both the original rule and the amended but substantively similar rule, in district court, Pennsylvania enlisted the services of law firm Williams & Connolly LLP to appeal the unconstitutionality of Rule 8.4(g).
The individuals and organizations that filed or signed onto amicus briefs in support of HLLI, include:
- Alliance Defending Freedom
- Bader Family Foundation
- Hans Bader
- Concerned Women for America
- Christian Legal Society
- First Liberty Institute
- Independence Law Center
- Institute for Faith and Family
- Justice & Freedom Law Center
- Legal insurrection Foundation
- Manhattan Institute
- The National Legal Foundation
- New Civil Liberties Alliance
- Pacific Justice Institute
- Pacific Legal Foundation
- Professor Patrick Gould
- Professor Bruce A. Green
- Professor Rebecca Roiphe
- Women’s Liberation Front
“We are grateful to have the support of so many preeminent organizations and individuals,” said HLLI Senior Attorney Adam Schulman. “The magnitude of the attention really goes to show the uniquely dangerous path Pennsylvania is pursuing with Rule 8.4(g).”
Hamilton Lincoln Law Institute is a nonprofit public interest law firm formed in 2019. HLLI challenges administrative and regulatory actions and abuses of the class action and civil justice system that exceed constitutional limits, promote rent-seeking, or otherwise improperly created deadweight loss; and challenges improper restrictions on speech and other actions beyond constitutional bounds.
For more information about this case, please contact:
Ted Frank, 703-203-3848, ted.frank@hlli.org
Adam Schulman, 610-457-0856, adam.schulman@hlli.org
John Andren, 703-582-2499, john.andren@hlli.org