Carolina Journal readers are familiar with North Carolina diet blogger Steve Cooksey, whose online diet advice has been the target of the North Carolina Board of Dietetics/Nutrition. The board claims he is practicing nutrition without a license. It’s ridiculous, and now an appeals court weighs in. From the website of the Institute for Justice:
The three-judge appellate panel, which included retired U.S. Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor, held that it had “no trouble deciding that Cooksey’s speech was sufficiently chilled by the actions of the State Board to show a First Amendment injury-in-fact.”
The appellate panel also dismissed the Board’s argument that its 19-page red-pen review of Cooksey’s did not chill his speech, noting that the “red-pen mark-up of his website from the State Board Complaint Committee . . . surely triggered the same trepidation we have all experienced upon receiving such markings on a high school term paper.”
The case, which has received significant national media attention, will now be sent back to the district court.
Victory for free speech.
