Maine Court Tosses Law Firm’s Speech Suit Over Interest Program

A Maine law firm and one of its clients failed to convince a federal court that the state’s program pooling interest from lawyers’ trust accounts, which gets distributed to legal advocacy groups, is unconstitutional.

Russell Johnson Beaupain LLC and David Wescott failed to sufficiently support their First Amendment claim “because they cannot establish being compelled to subsidize any speech,” Judge Lance E. Walker of the US District Court for the District of Maine wrote in a Wednesday order dismissing their claims. Wescott and the law firm on Wednesday also filed an appeal of the dismissal to the US Court of ...