Challenges to mandatory bar memberships and dues soon will be teed up in the U.S. Supreme Court in two cases asking the justices to extend the reach of their landmark 2018 First Amendment ruling that invalidated "fair share" union fees to include the legal arena.

Current and former officers of the State Bar Association of North Dakota have retained Goldstein & Russell partner Sarah Harrington, a former assistant to the solicitor general who has argued 21 Supreme Court cases. Harrington, in a new filing Monday at the high court, defended the state's "integrated bar" and urged the justices to keep a lower court ruling in place in the case Fleck v. Wetch.

"A bar association is not the exclusive representative of its membership in any context. A lawyer is always free to publicly take a position contrary to that of the state bar of which the lawyer is a member," Harrington told the justices. "Thus, compulsory membership places less of a burden on the lawyer's First Amendment rights."