The restrictions prohibited LSC attorneys from representing clients attempting to amend (or challenge) existing welfare law.

The Court ruled that the restrictions violated the free speech guarantees of the First Amendment to the United States Constitution.

The first major test of the federal government's power over funding restrictions based on speech was the 1991 case Rust v. Sullivan.

The purpose of the Act was to provide government-funded legal aid to indigent clients that would be funded through grants to regional entities throughout the country.

[6]In 1997, Carmen Velazquez lost welfare benefits from the government under the provisions of the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families Act (TANF).

It distinguished a 1991 Supreme Court case, Rust v. Sullivan, which upheld a prohibition on federally funded family planning services from discussing abortion with their patients.

The Court said that the government can only issue "content-neutral" conditions on such speech[3] and that the specific prohibition on welfare-reform litigation was viewpoint-based by restricting only support for welfare reform advocacy.

"[11] Justice Scalia wrote a dissenting opinion from the decision of the Court and believed that Rust mandated a ruling upholding the restriction.

"[19] The New York Times described the decision as the end of the "latest chapter, although almost certainly not the last, in a long political struggle over the federally financed program of civil legal services for the poor.

LSC, which had sought to protect the restrictions, said that it would "immediately review [their] regulations and then modify them to adhere to the Court's ruling," which it did quickly after the decision.

[11] Burt Neuborne, the lawyer who argued against the restriction before the Supreme Court, said that the ruling "really reads like a First Amendment textbook.

The argument raised in those challenges was that the Court articulated a new "conditions" principle in Velazquez, a distortion-of-speech test, which they argued would require the restrictions to be struck down.

[26] A Journal of Law and Politics article by Jay Johnson was critical of the decision and the Court's claimed distinction between the speech restriction in Rust and the one on LSC and contended that there was no functional difference between the two.

[32] The Court held in Velazquez that the restriction on welfare advocacy cases disrupted the "vital relationship between the bar and the judiciary.

[34] It concluded that the fundamental problems of statutory interpretation and a lack of a credible distinction with Rust in Justice Kennedy's analysis renders the opinion "unconvincing.

Because advocacy by LSC grantees to change welfare laws was not in advance of the government's own message, the restriction placed on it essentially prohibited a form of private speech.

[17][39] Gozdor, agreeing with Scalia's dissent, wrote that the restriction did not create such a distortion of private speech because Congress had still permitted LSC to form affiliate organizations, which would be considered "legally separate.

"[40] Notwithstanding the difficulty of an organization to classify itself as an "affiliate entity" of LSC, Gozdor argued that there was no real prevention of speech when there were ample alternative means of relaying the message.

[45] An article by Jessica Sharpe in the North Carolina Law Review argued that Kennedy's majority opinion wrongly set forth the understanding of the role of an attorney.