More State Bar Nonsense

This appeal arises from two consolidated actions filed by nonimmigrant aliens whose status, according to Louisiana Supreme Court Rule XVII, § 3(B), renders them ineligible to sit for the Louisiana Bar. The district courts disagreed whether the Louisiana rule impermissibly discriminates against the plaintiffs in violation of the Equal Protection Clause. Because the level of constitutional protection afforded nonimmigrant aliens is different from that possessed by permanent resident aliens, we hold that the Louisiana rule survives rational basis review.

Wallace vs. Calogero, No. 03-30752 (5th Cir. Aug. 1, 2005).

Comments

[Paul Gowder (of course)]

Doesn't GATT have provisions on this sort of thing? Or NAFTA, in the case of the Canadian?

As for the further warping of rational basis review that the 5th circuit carried out here... oy. At least they acknowledged that Plyler applied a HEIGHTENED rational basis review standard. Too bad it didn't actually APPLY it.

And the court's analysis of the bar's rational basis was itself patently irrational. The bar's ability to regulate its members does not depend on finding them within its jurisdiction! The bar's authority is limited to disbarment, which can be done to a lawyer wherever on the planet they may reside! I happen to be a member of the Louisiana bar, and should they want to disbar me in retaliation for this comment, the fact that I'm not in Louisiana at the moment hardly keeps them doing so, nor would it if I happened to be on MARS, so long as they could get some spaceship to deliver appropriate due-process-clause compliant notice to me. So how is such a person "utterly beyond the reach of the Louisiana bar?"

So the purported rational basis is, like in so many of these cases, utter nonsense.

Unless they have some reason to believe that the bar, qua bar, would get JUDGMENTS against these lawyers for MONEY, there seems to be no reason to believe that they'd be disadvantaged from their not being in the jurisdiction. (And I don't know of any bar getting meaningful judgments -- usually they leave that to the plaintiffs in malpractice suits, non?) And even if that were a rational basis, it would then also be a rational basis for a whole host of patently improper rules, including "only property owners may be lawyers." Which I suppose is equivalent to at least one state's mandatory and expensive malpractice insurance program, so maybe they CAN limit the profession to landowners, in which case my only answer is that it's about time those of us without land seized the means of production... then we will HAVE land. :-)