Occupational Speech

Your speech doesn’t lose First Amendment protection just because it’s related to your occupation. When IJ opened in 1991, many in the legal establishment considered that a radical idea. Now, thanks to IJ’s decades of litigation and advocacy, it’s the law of the land.

Countless Americans—from tour guides to lawyers—earn their living in occupations that consist primarily of speech.  But government officials use occupational licensing laws to stifle this speech and infringe on the right to earn an honest living, often at the behest of politically connected industries.

The very idea that Americans would have to register with the government before providing information or communicating a message is antithetical to this country’s tradition of free speech and open inquiry. But for decades courts routinely applied the so-called “Professional Speech” doctrine to exempt occupational speech from the First Amendment.

In 2018, the U.S. Supreme Court rejected this doctrine in NIFLA v. Becerra. Speaking for the majority, Justice Clarence Thomas wrote: “[T]his Court has not recognized ‘professional speech’ as a separate category of speech. Speech is not unprotected merely because it is uttered by ‘professionals.”

Though NIFLA wasn’t an IJ case, it builds directly on IJ’s cutting-edge litigation on occupational speech. Some of the people whose rights we have vindicated include:

• Tour guides in Charleston, Savannah, Philadelphia, and D.C. prevented from working unless they passed government-mandated tests.
• Mats Järlström, an Oregon man with an engineering degree fined for practicing “unlicensed” engineering after he suggested a new math equation for the timing of traffic lights.
• Bob Smith, owner of the Pacific Coast Horseshoeing School, threatened with closure of his school for admitting students who hadn’t graduated high school.
• End-of-life doulas in California and Indiana told to stop providing practical advice and emotional support related to someone’s passing—part of a pattern of licensing bodies aggressively protecting the traditional funeral industry from competition.

IJ continues fighting to ensure courts give occupational speech the full First Amendment protection it deserves.