There is a lot of confusion about what the "professional speech" doctrine was. Regulation of the medical profession is treated by SCOTUS as regulation of conduct, even when it involves speech. Many laws compelling statements by abortion providers have been upheld on that basis.

2. The professional speech doctrine was an attempt to give the speech of doctors *more* protection, not less. It was a middle ground to recognize that speech of doctors should have enhanced protection even though it was part of regulation of medical practice.

3. Then SCOTUS in NFLA stepped in and said, no, speech of professionals needs to be treated as pure speech or pure conduct. NFLA goes on to say that speech of doctors related to abortion is pure conduct because it is regulation of medical practice. Zero 1A protection.

4. The issue in NIFLA was that the law was being applied to crisis pregnancy centers that weren't actually performing medical procedures, so it couldn't be justified as regulation of medical profession.

5. So a fundamental unstated question in the conversion therapy is whether talk psychotherapy is part of the practice of medicine. CA11 treats it as pure speech, not as a real medical treatment.

6. I think the conceptual disconnect in these therapy cases is similar to the disconnect in public accommodation cases involving photographers for hire. The argument is that some professional services can be bracketed off in a separate category as “pure speech”

7. I think that’s ultimately an incoherent line to draw.