Joe Longley, the president of the State Bar of Texas, sent a letter Tuesday to Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton that questions the legality of the mandatory state bar organization’s ability to charge dues that allow many of the programs it funds to exist.
The result, according to lawyers familiar with the issues, could result in key projects and educational initiatives – such as programs that address homelessness or elderly abuse or promote the importance of the Texas jury system or pro bono representation of veterans – being defunded and discontinued.
Some lawyers say Longley’s petition is an indirect attack on the very existence of a mandatory state bar.
In a nine-page letter written on state bar letterhead, Longley asked Paxton to issue a legal opinion on multiple issues, including whether the state bar is violating the constitution when it forces its members to pay dues that are then spent for various causes that some of the bar’s 100,000 lawyer-members might find objectionable.
Longley questions the legality of the state bar to allow the Texas Young Lawyers Association, which includes attorneys who are 36 years or younger and accounts for 26 percent of the overall state bar membership, to elect three of its members to serve on the 46-member State Bar of Texas board of directors. He claims the system violates the “one-person, one-vote” requirement of the constitution.
Paxton confirmed Tuesday that he received Longley’s letter, but he gave no indication when he might respond with an official legal opinion on the questions presented.
“Is it constitutional to require bar members to pay compulsory bar dues, including to support bar programs … that bar members object to on First Amendment grounds (e.g., free speech, freedom of association), including programs that are not within the regulatory functions of the state bar?” Longley wrote to Paxton. “Is it constitutional to require bar members to pay compulsory bar dues to support TYLA, but to deny active non-TYLA members the right to vote on TYLA officers who sit on the state bar’s governing Board of Directors?”
Longley, according to multiple lawyers on the Texas bar association board, planned to make his challenge initially last Friday at a meeting of the State Bar of Texas board of directors.
But the meeting did not go as planned when Longley did not garner a single vote from the 46-member board. Instead, the board voted unanimously – Longley abstained – to endorse and continue to support the TYLA in its current fashion.
“The request for an attorney general’s opinion was prepared and submitted without approval from the State Bar of Texas Board of Directors, which is the board’s governing body. It would be premature for me to comment on the request until our board has a chance to review this matter,” State Bar Executive Director Trey Apffel said in a written statement to The Texas Lawbook.
“We are confident that the State Bar of Texas is in compliance with election laws, the State Bar Act and other applicable laws,” Apffel said. “This confidence was exhibited by the board’s unanimous affirmation of its current election system at its meeting last Friday.”
Houston trial lawyer Randy Sorrels, who is the state bar’s president-elect, said Longley received a letter in October challenging the TYLA that “caused Joe to scratch his head” and raise these issues.
“I think Joe has made up his mind on this, but I am not offended that he asked the Attorney General for an opinion,” Sorrels told The Texas Lawbook. “There is lots of legal authority out there that supports the bar’s current methods.”