Transcript:
Argument of Speaker
Mr. Speaker: The opinion of the Court in No. 93-639, Ibanez against Florida Department of Business and Professional Regulation will be announced by Justice Ginsburg.
Argument of Justice Ginsburg
Mr. Ginsburg: Silvia Ibanez is a lawyer practicing in Winter Haven, Florida.
She is also a certified public accountant and a certified financial planner.
She included the designations CPA and CFP along side her JD designation on her business cards and law office stationary and in her yellow pages listing.
For these communications, the Florida Board of Accountancy disciplined her declaring her use of the CPA and CFP designations falls deceptive and misleading.
The Florida District Court of Appeals upheld the Board's action.
We granted certiorari and today, hold that the Board's order censuring Ibanez is incompatible with First Amendment restraints on official action.
Ibanez truthfully represented that she is both a CPA and a CFP.
Truthful commercial speech is subject to restriction only when necessary to advance a substantial state interest.
The information Ibanez communicates is verifiable by the public she seeks to serve and the Board has not demonstrated that consumers could be mislead by her use of the CPA and CFP designations.
Because the Board has not overcome the presumption rooted in the First Amendment favoring disclosure of truthful relevant information over suppression, we reverse the Florida Court's judgment.
Justice O'Connor has filed an opinion concurring in part and dissenting in part joined by the Chief Justice.
