Florida Bar v. Went For It, Inc.
Florida Bar v. Went For It, Inc., 515 U.S. 618 (1995), was a United States Supreme Court case in which the Court upheld a state's restriction on lawyer advertising under the First Amendment's commercial speech doctrine. The Court's decision was the first time it did so since Bates v. State Bar of Arizona, , lifted the traditional ban on lawyer advertising. Background In 1989, the Florida Bar completed a two-year survey of public opinion of lawyers. It discovered that lawyers had a bad reputation stemming from their advertising activities. Accordingly, the Florida Bar proposed modifications to its rules regulating lawyer advertising in Florida. These modifications had the effect of creating a thirty-day blackout period after an accident or disaster during which lawyers were forbidden from soliciting business from the victims of such accidents or disasters, either directly or through a referral service. On March 22, 1992, a lawyer named G. Stewart McHenry, together with a lawyer referral service he owned called Went For It, Inc., filed a suit for declaratory and injunctive relief in U.S. District Court. McHenry argued that the 30-day blackout period violated the First Amendment right to free speech, insofar as Went For It sought to contact