Opinion: A victory good for all of us

This week's U.S. Supreme Court decision on legal services was an important victory not only for the poor but also for the constitutional freedoms that protect us all.

By 5-4, the court struck down a law passed by Congress in 1996 that sought to bar federally funded legal-services lawyers from challenging welfare laws or rules on behalf of their low-income clients. Writing for the narrow majority, Justice Anthony Kennedy said that such restriction violated free speech, distorted the legal system and illegally put the acts of Congress beyond judicial review.

The decision throws a constitutional wrench into a campaign by hard-right Republicans to cripple the Legal Services Corp. and sends the message that government may not control speech simply because it controls the purse-strings.

For years, conservative lawmakers on Capitol Hill have been gunning for Legal Services Corp. When proposals to kill it produced a public backlash, opponents did the next best thing: They cut its lawyers off at the knees, hamstringing them in their professional obligation to represent clients fairly and fully. This week's decision means that legal services lawyers will no longer be deemed second-tier lawyers and their poor clients will no longer be treated as second-class citizens.

The decision's impact could reach well beyond welfare lawsuits into other cases in which the government tries to curb free expression. The court made clear that government can discriminate on the basis of viewpoint where public money is involved only when the message could plausibly be attributed to government itself. Since legal-services lawyers represent their clients against government -- and not the other way around -- they can hardly be said to be its messengers.

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