Victory for “Caveman” Blogger and Free Speech in North Carolina

Many people associate professional licensing with consumer safety. For example, we wouldn’t want any schlub doing surgery. But where occupational licensing laws may have started out with the goal of protecting consumers, they have now become a means by which certain professionals restrict competition. States require licenses for hundreds of occupations including perilous professions like florist, funeral director, hair braider, and fortune teller.

The case of the “Caveman” blogger who was bullied by the North Carolina Board of Dietetics/Nutrition for providing nutritional advice without a license illustrates how licensing threatens not just our economic freedom, but our other basic freedoms. Luckily for blogger Steve Cooksey, his right to express his opinion and give advice to fellow dieters won out over the need to protect licensed dieticians from competition.

As the Institute for Justice, which has been fighting on Cooksey behalf, wrote yesterday:

In December 2011, Steve Cooksey started an advice column on his blog to answer reader questions about his struggle with Type II diabetes. Cooksey had lost 78 pounds, freed himself of drugs and doctors, and normalized his blood sugar after adopting a low-carb “Paleo” diet, modeled on the diet of our Stone Age ancestors. He wanted to use his blog to share his experience with others.

However, in January 2012, the North Carolina Board of Dietetics/Nutrition informed Cooksey that he could not give readers personalized advice on diet, whether for free or for compensation, because doing so constituted the unlicensed practice of dietetics. The board deemed Cooksey’s advice the unlicensed practice of nutritional counseling, sent him a 19-page print-up of his website indicating in red pen what he was and was not allowed to say, and threatened him with legal action if he did not comply.

In response to the Dietetic Board’s threats, Cooksey with the help of IJ, filed a lawsuit in 2012 against the Board. As IJ put it, the lawsuit sought to answer “one of the most important unresolved questions in First Amendment law: When does the government's power to license occupations trump free speech?”

Yesterday, IJ announced that the North Carolina Dietetics Board voted to adopt new guidelines allowing people to give ordinary diet advice without a government license, effectively settling the case—an important victory for free speech over this particular professional cartel.