the free speech of individual lawyers and citizens, but rather that of a corporation (the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People), and that the U.S. Constitution did not protect the free speech rights of corporations as strongly as it did that of people. Brennan disagreed: Corporations, he said, not only have rights equal to that of individuals, but a corporation may also assert free speech and free assembly rights on behalf of its members. The nature of these free speech rights in particular, Brennan said, were not limited to "abstract discussion", but included lawful advocacy against government intrusion on this and other rights. Litigation, too, he said, was protected. Litigation was not merely a mechanism for resolving differences between two private parties but a constitutionally protected form of political expression. Furthermore, litigation is constitutionally protected because it is one of the few lawful means by which equal protection of the laws can be enforced. The state of Virginia had argued that organizational activity (collecting membership dues, hiring attorneys, advocating lawsuits, etc.) of the kind the NAACP engaged in was not literally a speech act, a petition for redress of grievances, or assembly of the kind mentioned in the First Amendment. But Brennan and the majority disagreed, concluding that Court precedent clearly establishes that this kind of lawful activity is protected by the First and Fourteenth Amendments. Relying on the authoritative construction of the acts by the Virginia Supreme Court of Appeals, Brennan noted that merely telling another individual that their rights have been violated and referring that person to an attorney or group of attorneys became a crime under the five statutes. This chilled the lawyers' and individual's First Amendment rights, and made the individual's ability to enforce its Fourteenth Amendment rights difficult, both of which were unconstitutional: "There thus inheres in the statute the gravest danger of smothering all discussion looking to the eventual institution of litigation on behalf of the rights of members of an unpopular minority." The Virginia Supreme Court of Appeals had asserted that government had an interest in ensuring high professional standards in the legal community, and that it was not the state's intent to restrict freedom of expression. Brennan said this was no defense, for only the most compelling of governmental interests justifies an imposition on freedom of speech—and Court precedent had long established that a state's interest in prohibiting professional misconduct