Diet advice censorship: license to blog.

• Author: Doherty, Brian
• Position: Citings - Brief article

IN THE land of the First Amendment, should you he free to write about the benefits of your diet? That is what Steve Cooksey of North Carolina did on his "Diabetes Warrior" blog, where he discussed the "paleo" diet, which is limited to foods that humans ate before the development of agriculture.

The North Carolina Board of Dietetics/Nutrition insists you need a license even to give informal diet advice within that state. In January 2012, the board sent Cooksey a marked-up version of his site, suggesting what he was and was not legally permitted to say. Four months later, Cooksey, with help from the Institute for Justice, a libertarian law firm, sued the board in federal court, arguing that its censorship violated his First Amendment rights. In October, U.S. District...