High Court Rules Business Solicitation Is a Right : Free speech: Justices strike down a Florida law forbidding accountants from seeking out new clients in person.

The Supreme Court, in a ruling that extends free-speech rights to certain business practices, on Monday struck down a Florida law that barred accountants from soliciting new clients in person.

On an 8-1 vote, the justices said that accountants, like other professionals, have a constitutional right to convey “truthful, non-deceptive information” about their businesses.

The ruling likely invalidates similar laws from Texas, Minnesota and Louisiana. These measures are based on the view that, because accountants must make objective judgments about a company’s finances, they should not be permitted to aggressively sell themselves to clients.

But in recent years, the justices have insisted that the First Amendment protects advertising and solicitations, as well as traditional political speeches and pamphlets. Just last month, the court struck down a Cincinnati ordinance that banned sidewalk news racks containing magazines loaded with real estate ads.

The court opinion rejected the city’s defense that advertising always should be accorded a “lesser protection” under the First Amendment.

In Monday’s opinion, Justice Anthony M. Kennedy expressed strong support for what lawyers label “commercial speech.”

“The commercial marketplace, like other spheres of our social and cultural life, provides a forum where ideas and information flourish. Some of the ideas and information are vital, some of slight worth,” Kennedy said. “But the general rule is that the speaker and the audience, not the government, assess the value of the information presented.”

But the court stopped short of overturning a 1978 decision that upheld an Ohio law forbidding lawyers from directly soliciting business from victims of an auto accident.

Unlike the classic ambulance chaser, accountants will be speaking to “sophisticated and experienced business executives” who are “far less susceptible to manipulation than the young accident victim” in the 1978 case, Kennedy said.

The case decided Monday began in 1985 when Scott Fane, a New Jersey certified public accountant, moved to Florida.

He specialized in providing tax advice to small businesses and had built his practice by soliciting clients in person.

But the Florida Board of Accountancy prohibited CPAs from “any direct, in-person, uninvited solicitation” of customers. Believing that his free-speech rights had been violated, Fane filed a suit in federal court seeking to have the regulation struck down.

A federal judge agreed and invalidated the rule, as did an appeals court in Atlanta. The Justices agreed to hear the case (Edenfield vs. Fane, 91-1594), but only Justice Sandra Day O’Connor sided with the state. In her view, the government may regulate “pure profit seeking” by business persons.

In his opinion concurring with the majority, Justice Harry A. Blackmun chided his colleagues for not going further and ruling that commercial speech is entitled to the same constitutional protection as speech about public affairs.