Frazier v. Heebe ( 1987 )

Justice Brennan

delivered the opinion of the Court.

The question for decision is whether a United States District Court may require that applicants for general admission to its bar either reside or maintain an office in the State where that court sits.

I

Petitioner David Frazier is an attorney having both his residence and his law office in Pascagoula, Mississippi. An experienced litigator, he is a member of the Mississippi and Louisiana State Bars, and also of the Bars of the United States Courts of Appeals for the Fifth and Eleventh Circuits and the United States District Court for the Southern District of Mississippi. In April 1982, Frazier applied for admission to the Bar of the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Louisiana. His application was denied because he neither lived nor had an office in Louisiana, as required by the court’s local Rule 21.2. In addition, Frazier was ineligible for admission under the court’s local Rule 21.3.1, which requires continuous and uninterrupted Louisiana residence or maintenance of a Louisiana law office for continuing eligibility in that bar.

Frazier challenged these District Court Rules by petitioning for a writ of prohibition from the Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit. The petition alleged that the restrictions in Rules 21.2 and 21.3.1 were unconstitutional, on their face and as applied to him. The Court of Appeals did not rule on the petition, but remanded the case to the District Court for the Eastern District for appropriate proceedings and entry of an appealable judgment. All the judges of the Eastern District recused themselves. The matter was assigned to Judge Edwin Hunter, a Senior Judge of the Western District of Louisiana. The District Court held a 1-day bench trial in which two District Court Judges, two Magistrates, and the Clerk of the Eastern District testified in support of the challenged Rules.

Frazier challenged the District Court Rules on several constitutional grounds, primarily under the equal protection requirement of the Due Process Clause of the Fifth Amendment.¹ Applying the standard of intermediate scrutiny, the District Court upheld Rule 21.2 as constitutional.² 594 P. Supp. 1173, 1179 (1984).

The District Court found that the Rule serves the important Government objective of the efficient administration of justice. Ibid. It relied on testimony by court officials that proximity to the New Orleans courthouse is important when emergencies arise during proceedings, and that participation by nonresident attorneys complicates the scheduling of routine court matters. Id., at 1183-1184. The court also found that the office requirement is not unduly restrictive and that it increases the availability of an attorney to the court. Finally, it stated the failure to require in-state attorneys to open a local office was reasonable, since such attorneys “must of necessity open an office,” and, even absent an office, an instate attorney is likely to be available. Ibid. Without further explanation, the court declared that the in-state attorney’s admission to the bar “does not raise the same concern for the efficient administration of justice that admission of nonresident attorneys does.” Ibid. After reviewing petitioner’s other claims, the District Court denied Frazier’s petition for extraordinary relief and dismissed his suit.

The Court of Appeals affirmed over a dissent. 788 F. 2d 1049 (1986). The court found that the discrimination at issue did not warrant heightened scrutiny, and held that the exclusion was rationally related to the District Court’s goal of promoting lawyer competence and availability for hearings. It characterized the testimony before the District Court as “of one voice: lawyers admitted pro hac vice, who neither reside nor maintain an office in Louisiana, fail to comply with the local rules and impede the efficient administration of justice more than members of the bar of the Eastern District.” Id., at 1054. The court also noted that out-of-state attorneys were not unduly disadvantaged by this restriction, since they could affiliate with Louisiana counsel and appear pro hac vice. Id., at 1054 — 1055. Finally, the court denied petitioner’s alternative request to invalidate these Rules through use of the Court of Appeals’ supervisory power over District Courts in that Circuit. The court expressed its reluctance to exercise its supervisory authority because the Fifth Circuit Judicial Council was at that time reviewing the local Rules of the District Courts in the Circuit. Id., at 1055.

We granted certiorari, 479 U. S. 960 (1986), and now reverse. Pursuant to our supervisory authority, we hold that the District Court was not empowered to adopt its local Rules to require members of the Louisiana Bar who apply for admission to its bar to live in, or maintain an office in, Louisiana where that court sits. We therefore need not address the constitutional questions presented.

I 1 — 1

We begin our analysis by recognizing that a district court has discretion to adopt local rules that are necessary to carry out the conduct of its business. See 28 U. S. C. §§ 1654, 2071; Fed. Rule Civ. Proc. 83. This authority includes the regulation of admissions to its own bar. A district court’s discretion in promulgating local rules is not, however, without limits. This Court may exercise its inherent supervisory power to ensure that these local rules are consistent with “‘the principles of right and justice.’” In re Ruffalo, 390 U. S. 544, 554 (1968) (White, J., concurring) (citation omitted); see In re Snyder, 472 U. S. 634, 643 (1985); Theard v. United States, 354 U. S. 278, 282 (1957); Ex parte Burr, 9 Wheat. 529, 530 (1824).³ Section 2071 requires that local rules of a district court “shall be consistent with” the “rules of practice and procedure prescribed by the Supreme Court.”⁴ Today we invoke our supervisory authority to prohibit arbitrary discrimination against members of the Louisiana Bar, residing and having their office out-of-state, who are otherwise qualified to join the Bar of the Eastern District.

In the present case, our attention is focused on the requirements imposed by Rule 21.2 of the Eastern District of Louisiana,⁵ namely that, to be admitted to the bar, an attorney must reside or maintain an office in Louisiana. Respondents assert that these requirements facilitate the efficient administration of justice, because nonresident attorneys allegedly are less competent and less available to the court than resident attorneys. We disagree. We find both requirements to be unnecessary and irrational.

Rule 21.2’s requirement of residence in Louisiana arbitrarily discriminates against out-of-state attorneys who have passed the Louisiana bar examination and are willing to pay the necessary fees and dues in order to be admitted to the Eastern District Bar. No empirical evidence was introduced at trial to demonstrate why this class of attorneys, although members of the Louisiana Bar, should be excluded from the Eastern District’s Bar.⁶ Instead, the evidence was limited almost exclusively to experiences with pro hac vice practitioners, who unlike petitioner, were not members of the Louisiana Bar. Tr. 153. Experience with this category of onetime or occasional practitioners does not provide a basis for predicting the behavior of attorneys, who are members of the Louisiana Bar and who seek to practice in the Eastern District on a regular basis.

Indeed, there is no reason to believe that nonresident attorneys who have passed the Louisiana bar examination are less competent than resident attorneys. The competence of the former group in local and federal law has been tested and demonstrated to the same extent as that of Louisiana lawyers, and its members are equally qualified. We are unwilling to assume that “a nonresident lawyer — any more than a resident — would disserve his clients by failing to familiarize himself [or herself] with the [local] rules.” Supreme Court of New Hampshire v. Piper, 470 U. S. 274, 285 (1985).⁷ The Court has previously recognized that a nonresident lawyer is likely to have a substantial incentive, as a practical matter, to learn and keep abreast of local rules. Ibid. A lawyer’s application to a particular bar is likely to be based on the expectation of considerable local practice, since it requires the personal investment of taking the state bar examination and paying fees and annual dues. Moreover, other more effective means of ensuring the competence of bar members are available to the district courts, including examination or seminar attendance requirements. Complete exclusion is unnecessary.

We also do not believe that an alleged need for immediate availability of attorneys in some proceedings requires a blanket rule that denies all nonresident attorneys admission to a district-court bar. If attorney availability is a significant problem, the Rules are poorly crafted to remedy it. For example, the Rules presume that a lawyer in Shreveport, Louisiana, which is located more than 300 miles from the New Orleans courthouse of the Eastern District, is more likely or able to attend a conference than a lawyer such as petitioner, who is only 110 miles away, but must cross a state boundary on his way to the court. As a practical matter, a high percentage of nonresident attorneys willing to take the state bar examination and pay the annual dues will reside in places “reasonably convenient” to the District Court. Cf. 470 U. S., at 286-287. Moreover, modern communication systems, including conference telephone arrangements, make it possible to minimize the problem of unavailability. Finally, district courts have alternative means to ensure prompt attendance at important conferences. For instance, they may impose sanctions on lawyers who fail to appear on schedule. Indeed, the Eastern District has adopted Rule 21.8.1, which specifically requires that sanctions be imposed on lawyers who fail to appear at hearings.⁸ We therefore conclude that the residency requirement imposed by the Eastern District is unnecessary and arbitrarily discriminates against out-of-state attorneys.

Similarly, we find the in-state office requirement unnecessary and irrational. First, the requirement is not imposed on in-state attorneys. A resident lawyer is allowed to maintain his or her only office outside of Louisiana. A resident lawyer with an out-of-state office is equally as unavailable to the court as a nonresident lawyer with an out-of-state office. In addition, the mere fact that an attorney has an office in Louisiana surely does not warrant the assumption that he or she is more competent than an out-of-state member of the state bar. Requiring petitioner to have a Louisiana address and telephone number, and an in-state answering service will not elevate his or her understanding of the local Rules. As the failure to require in-state attorneys to have an in-state office reveals, the location of a lawyer’s office simply has nothing to do with his or her intellectual ability or experience in litigating cases in Federal District Court.

We further conclude that any need the court may have to ensure the availability of attorneys does not justify the instate office requirement. As observed with regard to state residency requirements, there is no link between residency within a State and proximity to a courthouse. The office requirement does not specify that counsel be in the Eastern District, but only that the attorney have an office somewhere in the State, regardless of how far that office is from the courthouse.⁹ Thus, we conclude that neither the residency requirement nor the office requirement of the local Rules is justified.¹⁰

Respondents contend that nonresident lawyers are not totally foreclosed from Eastern District practice because they can appear pro hac vice. In Piper, however, we recognized that this alternative does not allow the nonresident attorney to practice “on the same terms as a resident member of the bar.” 470 U. S., at 277, n. 2. An attorney not licensed by a district court must repeatedly file motions for each appearance on a pro hac vice basis. 594 F. Supp., at 1177. In addition, in order to appear pro hac vice under local Rule 21.5, a lawyer must also associate with a member of the Eastern District Bar, who is required to sign all court documents.¹¹ 594 F. Supp., at 1177. This association, of course, imposes a financial and administrative burden on nonresident counsel.¹² Furthermore, it is ironic that “local” counsel may be located much farther away from the New Orleans courthouse than the out-of-state counsel. Thus, the availability of appearance pro hac vice is not a reasonable alternative for an out-of-state attorney who seeks general admission to the Eastern District’s Bar.¹³

Reversed.

1 Petitioner also contended that the local Rules violated the Commerce Clause, the Full Faith and Credit Clause, the Privileges and Immunities Clause, and the First and Fourteenth Amendments of the Federal Constitution.

2 In determining the level of review appropriate for the federal equal protection challenge, the court determined that no fundamental constitutional right was implicated and that Frazier was not a member of a suspect class. The court therefore concluded that strict scrutiny was unnecessary. The court did not determine whether intermediate or deferential scrutiny was required for classifications based on state residency, because it concluded that, even under intermediate scrutiny, Rule 21.2 was constitutional. 594 F. Supp. 1173, 1180-1182 (1984).

3 See also Flanders, Local Rules in Federal District Courts: Usurpation, Legislation, or Information, 14 Loyola (LA) L. Rev. 213, 252-256 (1981); Martineau, The Supreme Court and State Regulation of the Legal Profession, 8 Hastings Const. L. Q. 199, 234-236 (1981); Note, The Supervisory Power of the Federal Courts, 76 Harv. L. Rev. 1656, 1656-1657 (1963).

4 Section 2072 confirms the supervisory authority that the Court has over lower federal courts: “The Supreme Court shall have the power to prescribe by general rules, the forms of process, writs, pleadings, and motions, and the practice and procedure of the district courts and courts of appeals of the United States in civil actions. . . .” 28 U. S. C. §2072. The local rules must also be consistent with Acts of Congress. 28 U. S. C. §2071. Congress thus far has chosen to leave regulation of the federal bars to the courts.

5 Petitioner does not challenge the requirement of Rule 21.2 that an attorney must be a member in good standing of the Louisiana Bar.

6 During the bench trial, there was only one occasion when a witness, testifying in favor of the local Rules, distinguished between nonresident members of the Louisiana Bar and pro hac vice practitioners. In that instance, the witness could offer anecdotal testimony about only two nonresident members of the Louisiana Bar. Tr. 214-215 (testimony of Magistrate Wynne).

7 In Supreme Court of New Hampshire v. Piper, 470 U. S. 274 (1985), the Court held that a Rule by a State Supreme Court that limited bar admission to state residents violated the Privileges and Immunities Clause of Art. IV, § 2. In the context of that case, the Court considered several contentions quite similar to those presented here. The Court rejected the notion that nonresident attorneys should be presumed to be less competent or less available than resident attorneys. 470 U. S., at 285-286. We held that a State may discriminate against nonresident attorneys only where its reasons are substantial and the difference in treatment bears a close relationship to those reasons.

Rules that discriminate against nonresident attorneys are even more difficult to justify in the context of federal-court practice than they are in the area of state-court practice, where laws and procedures may differ substantially from State to State. See Comisky & Patterson, The Case for a Federally Created National Bar by Rule or by Legislation, 66 Temp. L. Q. 945, 960-964 (1982). There is a growing body of specialized federal law and a more mobile federal bar, accompanied by an increased demand for specialized legal services regardless of state boundaries. See Simonelli, State Regulation of a Federal License to Practice Law, 66 N. Y. State Bar J. 15 (May 1984). The Court’s supervisory power over federal courts allows the Court to intervene to protect the integrity of the federal system, while its authority over state-court bars is limited to enforcing federal constitutional requirements. Because of these differences, the Court has repeatedly emphasized, for example, that disqualification from membership from a state bar does not necessarily lead to disqualification from a federal bar. See Theard v. United States, 354 U. S. 278, 282 (1957); Selling v. Radford, 243 U. S. 46, 49 (1917); cf. Sperry v. Florida ex rel. Florida Bar, 373 U. S. 379, 385-387 (1963).

8 Furthermore, the Court noted in Piper that “[t]he trial court, by rule or as an exercise of discretion, may require any lawyer who resides at a great distance to retain a local attorney who will be available for unscheduled meetings and hearings.” 470 U. S., at 287.

9 For example, if a lawyer in Port Arthur, Texas, opened a branch office just across the state line in Lake Charles, Louisiana, he or she could join the Eastern District Bar even though that office was twice as far from the courthouse in New Orleans as is petitioner’s office.

10 Under Rule 21.3.1, a lawyer must maintain an in-state residence or office not only at the time of admission, but also for as long as the lawyer desires to remain a member of the Eastern District Bar. This Rule serves only to extend the unfairness of Rule 21.2. We therefore also find this local Rule to be unnecessary and irrational.

11 Under Rule 21.6, a District Court may grant a waiver of local-counsel association only if it would be a hardship for an out-of-state client.

12 From the lawyer’s standpoint, he or she will be at a significant disadvantage in attracting clients. Clients would have to be willing to provide compensation for the necessary association with a local lawyer who will duplicate the principal lawyer’s efforts. The effect of such a rule is to drive up the cost of litigation and to steer business almost exclusively to the instate bar. A client may have a number of excellent reasons to select a nonlocal lawyer: his or her regular lawyer most familiar with the legal issues may be nonlocal; a nonresident lawyer may practice a specialty not available locally; or a client may be involved in an unpopular cause with which local lawyers are reluctant to be associated. See Piper, 470 U. S., at 281.

13 Furthermore, in many District Courts the decision on whether to grant pro hac vice status to an out-of-state attorney is purely discretionary and therefore is not a freely available alternative. See Supreme Court of New Hampshire v. Piper, supra, at 277, n. 2; Leis v. Flynt, 439 U. S. 438, 442 (1979).