In Legal Services Corp. v. Velazquez (2001) 531 U.S. 533, the court considered a challenge to the Legal Services Corporation (LSC) funding provision. That provision permitted LSC lawyers to represent clients challenging the level of welfare benefits they received, but precluded the lawyers from arguing that any applicable state statute conflicts with a federal statute or that either the state or federal statute violates the United States Constitution. Over a strong dissent, the high court ruled that the challenged provision was a viewpoint-based discrimination that violated the First Amendment. (Legal Services Corp., at pp. 536-537.) "By seeking to prohibit the analysis of certain legal issues and to truncate presentation to the courts, the enactment under review prohibits speech and expression upon which courts must depend for the proper exercise of the judicial power. (Id. at p. 545.) "A scheme so inconsistent with accepted separation-of-powers principles is an insufficient basis to sustain or uphold the restriction on speech." (Id. at p. 546.)