[textbook]Traversing the Ethical Minefield Problems, Law, and Professional Responsibility by Susan R. Martyn (z-lib.org)(1) (1)

In Button, the Court overturned a Virginia antisolicitation regulation that prohibited
NAACP lawyers from soliciting plaintiffs for constitutional challenges to segregated
education. The Court held that the regulation violated the NAACP’s First and Fourteenth
Amendment rights by “unduly inhibiting protected freedoms of expression and
association.” It characterized the NAACP’s litigation activity as “political expression,”
which “may well be the sole practicable avenue open to a minority to petition for redress of
grievances.” 2
In the next three cases, the court applied the same high level of constitutional
protection to the activities of labor unions that sought to provide low-cost legal services to
their members. These decisions culminated with the statement in United Transportation
Union: “the common thread running through our decisions in NAACP v. Button,
Trainmen, and United Mine Workers is that collective activity undertaken to obtain
meaningful access to the courts is a fundamental right within the protection of the First
Amendment.” 3
In Primus, the Court held that the ACLU, like the NAACP, used litigation as a “form
of political expression,” not as a means to resolve private differences. Responding to the
state’s argument that the ACLU’s policy of requesting attorney’s fees took the case outside
of political expression, the Court found that such a possibility was not sufficient to equate
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