The Arizona Supreme Court adopted an amended version of a rule on Tuesday to separate the State Bar of Arizona’s regulatory and non-regulatory functions.
The think tank sought to end the practice of the mandatory state bar using attorneys’ dues for political purposes. However, the state’s highest court also included an amendment that gutted the rule. The changes to R-24-0030 Rules 32(b) and (c), Rules of the state Supreme Court, will go into effect on January 1, 2025.
Mauricio “Mo” Hernandez, an Arizona attorney who has closely tracked developments with state bar reforms, told The Arizona Sun Times, “Goldwater and others who commented opposed the proposed amendment because it essentially left the structure and functions of the State Bar as is. The Bar unsurprisingly endorsed the undisclosed proponent’s amendment, which merely codified in the court’s administrative rule 32 that the Bar would comply with Keller v. California — something the Bar has contended (despite evidence to the contrary) that it has been doing all along. Bottom line, there’s no material change and the beat goes on.”
The Supreme Court held in Keller v. California that attorneys required to be members of a state bar association have a First Amendment right to refrain from subsidizing the organization’s political or ideological activities.
Rich Robins, who helps run texasbarsunset.com, a site focusing on exposing abuses such as bar embezzling, fraud, retaliatory lawfare, bribery, and general corruption, primarily at the Texas Bar while tracking improprieties at other state bars as well, closely followed the progress of the rule. He told The Sun Times that the amendment provides “thinly veiled permissions for a state bar to incentivize judges & justices, legislators, executive branch members, and media conformists to see things that bar’s way when it comes to a bar’s consistently boosting bar bureaucrats’ self-enrichment at society’s expense.”
Robins said the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals’ ruling in McDonald v. Longley should have been followed. It reined in two state bars, holding that compelled membership in a bar association that engages in non-germane activities violates the constitutional right to freedom of association. “The 5th Circuit Court of Federal Appeals had to intervene and try to work within that U.S. Supreme Court-dictated framework when granting a judgment against the Texas Bar and later the Louisiana Bar during the past half a decade for not complying with the abovementioned standard that the Supreme Court of Arizona just renewed.”
This was the third time the Goldwater Institute proposed this type of rule change. The Arizona Legislature has run bills almost every session for over 10 years attempting to reform the state bar due to criticism that it targets conservative attorneys. The state bar’s disciplinary judge suspended Kari Lake’s election attorney, Bryan Blehm, this year and a longtime Maricopa County prosecutor last December who brought charges against Antifa over a violent protest.
