Vermont passed a law prohibiting the exchange of a variety of socially important information. Most notably, the law outlaws the transfer of doctors’ prescription history to facilitate drug companies’ one-on-one marketing — a practice known as “detailing” — because it believes detailing drives up brand-name drug sales and, in turn, health care costs. The state knew that the First Amendment prevented it from banning detailing itself, so it made the practice more difficult indirectly.

Yet data collection and transfer are protected speech — think academic research, or the phone book — and government efforts to regulate this type of speech also runs afoul of the First Amendment. See, e.g., Solveig Singleton, Cato Policy Analysis No. 295, “Privacy as Censorship: A Skeptical View of Proposals to Regulate Privacy in the Private Sector” (January 22, 1998). The First Circuit had earlier upheld a similar New Hampshire law, somehow finding that the statute regulates conduct rather than speech and that, in any event, the judiciary should defer to the legislative branch’s judgment.

When the Supreme Court declined to review that case (which cert petition Cato supported), Cato joined the Pacific Legal Foundation and a number of individuals on a brief asking the Second Circuit to split with its First Circuit brethren and reject this dangerous narrowing of protection for free expression. The Second Circuit did just that and ruled that statutes restricting commercial speech about prescription drug-related data gathering are unconstitutional. The court emphasized that the First Amendment protects “[e]ven dry information, devoid of advocacy, political relevance, or artistic expression.”

Vermont filed a petition asking the Supreme Court to review the case, which its adversaries supported in order to more quickly resolve the circuit split. Cato, again joining PLF, filed a brief supporting the respondents, two companies that collect and sell health information and analysis. Our brief argues that the Second Circuit should be affirmed and the Court should abandon the unworkable distinction between commercial and noncommercial speech set out in a 1980 case called Central Hudson Gas & Electric v. Public Service Commission. Specifically, the Central Hudson approach to commercial speech veers into viewpoint discrimination and should be abandoned in favor of strict scrutiny because innovative and valuable commercial expression deserves full First Amendment protection.

The Supreme Court will hear argument in this new case out of Vermont, Sorrell v. IMS Health, on April 26. Thanks to legal associate Caitlyn McCarthy for her help with Cato’s brief and this blog post.