U.S. Supreme Court refuses to hear a Florida diet coach’s First Amendment case

The U.S. Supreme Court has refused to take up a First Amendment problem to a Florida legislation that prevented a girl from offering dietary recommendation to shoppers in her well being and diet teaching enterprise.

The court docket on Monday stated it might not hear the case filed by Heather Kokesch Del Castillo, who was cited by the Florida Department of Health in 2017 for getting paid to present dietary recommendation with out being a licensed dietitian or nutritionist.

As is widespread, the Supreme Court didn’t clarify its causes for denying the case.

Del Castillo, who was represented by the Institute for Justice nationwide authorized group, went to the Supreme Court this 12 months after dropping in federal district court docket and the eleventh U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.

Del Castillo offered dietary recommendation whereas working her enterprise, Constitution Nutrition, in California, in accordance to court docket paperwork. After her husband, a U.S. Air Force airman, was transferred to Northwest Florida, she deliberate to proceed the enterprise.

But a licensed dietitian complained to the Department of Health after seeing an advert in a journal, the petition stated. The division ordered Del Castillo to cease offering dietary recommendation and to pay $754 in fines and charges, prompting the lawsuit.

In a petition to the Supreme Court, Del Castillo’s attorneys argued that her speech rights have been violated and that the state’s restrictions are “rife with holes and exceptions.”

“Heather’s advice would have been perfectly legal, for example, if she had been selling nutrition supplements instead of just selling advice and encouragement,” her attorneys wrote. “In other words, taking five dollars as compensation for telling someone ‘eating fewer carbohydrates will help you lose weight’ is a crime, but telling that same person ‘you can lose weight if you eat fewer carbohydrates and give me five dollars for this miraculous pill’ is perfectly legal.”

But in a response filed in October, attorneys in Attorney General Ashley Moody’s workplace pointed to authorized precedent that a state “may permissibly regulate speech as an incident to a regulation of conduct, including professional conduct..”

“Petitioner’s position, if accepted, would have far-reaching consequences. Petitioner appears to submit that any professional licensing scheme is subject to challenge by unlicensed persons, armed with heightened scrutiny under the First Amendment, if any portion of that scheme can be said to ‘restrict speech’ of those unlicensed persons,” the response stated. “That would throw into doubt the constitutionality of longstanding licensing schemes that have never been thought to present a general First Amendment problem, such as requirements that lawyers, doctors and architects obtain a license before they may hold themselves out, and provide advice, as professionals.”

Also, the state pointed to a change the Legislature made in 2020 that narrowed the legislation regulating dietary and dietary recommendation. The change didn’t make the lawsuit moot, however it allowed unlicensed individuals to present recommendation to shoppers who are usually not “under the supervision of a doctor for a disease or medical condition requiring nutrition intervention.”

“The statutory scheme is thus narrowly focused on the type of professional conduct that has direct medical effects — like Florida’s scheme for licensing doctors or other health care professionals,” the response stated.

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