## Facts

- Edna Smith Primus, a South Carolina lawyer, volunteered as a cooperating attorney for the state ACLU affiliate without compensation.
- South Carolina officials were accused of sterilizing certain women as a condition of continued public medical assistance.
- Primus attended a meeting of affected women, discussed possible legal claims, and later sent at least one attendee a follow-up letter on ACLU letterhead.
- The letter stated that the ACLU was willing to provide free legal assistance to challenge the sterilizations.
- State bar authorities charged Primus with improper client solicitation under state disciplinary rules.
- A grievance board issued a private reprimand; the Supreme Court of South Carolina adopted the findings and imposed a public reprimand.

## Issues

1. Whether the First and Fourteenth Amendments permit a state to discipline an attorney for a written offer of free legal assistance made through a nonprofit advocacy organization in connection with litigation tied to a political or civil-liberties controversy.
2. Whether applying attorney-solicitation rules to such nonprofit, cause-related outreach is constitutionally distinguishable from regulation of in-person solicitation for pecuniary gain.

## Decision

- The Supreme Court reversed and set aside the public reprimand.
- The Court held that applying South Carolina’s disciplinary rules to Primus’s letter violated the First and Fourteenth Amendments.
- The Court characterized solicitation by a nonprofit advocacy organization that uses litigation to advance political goals as protected expressive and associational activity.
- The Court distinguished discipline for written, noncoercive, nonprofit outreach offering free representation from regulation of in-person solicitation for financial gain.

## Legal Principles

- Litigation-related outreach by nonprofit advocacy groups may constitute political expression and political association protected by the First Amendment.
- When a state regulates attorney conduct in the context of protected political expression and association, restrictions must be drawn with narrow specificity and applied with significantly greater precision.
- A state’s general interests in preventing overreaching, protecting privacy, and maintaining professional standards do not justify discipline absent evidence that the communication involved coercion, misrepresentation, undue influence, or similar abuse.
- Written, noncoercive offers of free representation connected to nonprofit political advocacy receive stronger constitutional protection than in-person solicitation undertaken for pecuniary gain.

## Conclusion

The Court held that disciplining an ACLU-affiliated lawyer for a letter offering free representation to a potential plaintiff in a civil-liberties controversy impermissibly burdened protected expressive and associational activity, and it reversed the state-imposed reprimand.


In re Primus, 436 U.S. 412 (1978)