Public Citizen, the ACLU, and the NYCLU Comment on New York's Advertising Rules

by Greg Beck

As I've previously written, the New York courts are considering adopting new ethics rules restricting attorney advertising.  Today, Public Citizen, the ACLU, and the New York Civil Liberties Union submitted comments urging the courts to reject the proposed amendments in their entirety.  The comments, which you can read here, attack the constitutionality of the proposed amendments on three grounds:

1. The rules do not contain an exception for nonprofit attorneys, thereby restricting non-commercial and political speech at the core of the First Amendment.
2. The rules contain pointless restrictions on the content of attorney advertising that seem aimed more at limiting competition than helping consumers.  I wrote about these restrictions in more detail here.
3. The rules impose draconian burdens on Internet speech that would, for example, require us to print out a copy of this blog every time it is modified.  I covered this aspect of the rules here.

The proposed amendments have garnered a lot of negative publicity, especially in the blogosphere, and we hope that the courts will reconsider these blatantly unconstitutional rules.