Crowe v. State Bar of Oregon

On April 24, 2025, the Liberty Justice Center filed an amicus brief with the U.S. Supreme Court in support of a petition for writ of certiorari in a case challenging Oregon’s requirement that lawyers join and pay dues to the Oregon State Bar as a condition of practicing law.

The petition in Crowe v. State Bar of Oregon alleges that compelled bar membership and mandatory dues violate attorneys’ First Amendment rights to free speech and association. The petitioners argue that being forced to financially support the bar—an organization that often engages in political and ideological activities—as a condition of practicing law is compelled speech in violation of the First Amendment to the United States Constitution.

 As the Liberty Justice Center’s amicus brief explains, the Court’s precedent addressing whether mandatory bar dues violate the First Amendment conflicts with its more recent cases applying the rights to free speech and association under the First Amendment. In the 1990 case of Keller v. State Bar of California, the Supreme Court allowed mandatory bar dues for activities “germane” to regulating the legal profession. But more recently in the Court’s 2018 ruling in Janus v. AFSCME, the Court held that public-sector employees could not be compelled to pay union dues or fees as a condition of their employment.

The brief argues that the logic of Janus—that the government cannot compel a person to pay money to a private organization that speaks on political and ideological issues as a condition of doing their job—applies just as strong to lawyers compelled to pay money to the bar as a condition of maintaining their law license.  Therefore, the brief argues that the Court should grant the petition to overturn Keller.