Opinion ID: 176237
Heading Depth: 4
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: The remaining Central Hudson factors

Text: Having determined that the composition claim rbST free is not inherently misleading, we must review the State's ban on such claims under the final three Central Hudson factors: (1) whether the State's asserted interest is substantial, (2) whether the regulation directly advances that interest, and (3) whether the regulation is no more extensive than necessary to serve the asserted interest. See Central Hudson, 447 U.S. at 566, 100 S.Ct. 2343. All three of these factors must be met in order for the Rule to be upheld. See id. Turning to the first factor, we note that the Rule's purported purpose is to prevent the use of false or misleading labeling. See Ohio Admin. Code § 901:11-8-01(A). The Processors concede that this interest is substantial. But because the Rule is aimed at preventing consumer deception, the State bears the burden to demonstrate that the harms it recites are real and that its restriction will in fact alleviate them to a material degree. Ibanez v. Fla. Dep't of Bus. & Prof'l Regulation, Bd. of Accountancy, 512 U.S. 136, 146, 114 S.Ct. 2084, 129 L.Ed.2d 118 (1994) (citation omitted). In Ibanez, the Supreme Court declared unconstitutional the Florida Board of Accountancy's censuring of an attorney for referring to her designation as a Certified Public Accountant and as a Certified Financial Planner in her advertising materials and other communications with the public. The Court's ruling stemmed from the failure of the Board to point to any harm that is potentially real, not purely hypothetical and the complete absence of any evidence of deception. Id. at 145-46, 114 S.Ct. 2084 (citation omitted). In the present case, the record of deception is weak at best. The only evidence that the State points to is the FDA's Interim Guidance and consumer comments that it received in response to the proposed Rule. But the Guidance provides little support in this regard. The FDA suggests in the Guidance that the claim rbST free may imply a compositional difference between the two types of milk, 59 Fed.Reg. 6279, 6280 (emphasis added), but this statement does not establish that such a claim is necessarily misleading in every context. Furthermore, the FDA cited no evidence or studies in the Guidance to support its concerns regarding consumer confusion. The Guidance therefore does not constitute evidence of deception as required under Ibanez. Also unhelpful are the consumer comments that the ODA received after issuing the proposed Rule. The State received approximately 2,700 comments, of which the Processors estimate that only 70 were in support of the Rule. We agree with the State that some of these comments demonstrate consumer confusion regarding the use of rbST in milk production. One commenter, for example, asserted that she needed to know that the milk I drink has no added hormones, thereby indicating that she believed rbST to be present in conventional milk. But few if any of these commenters indicated that their confusion stemmed from the product labels. The commenter quoted above, for instance, was informed about rbST and milk production from conversations with her oncologist, not from reading the labels. Although there is not a complete absence of deception as there was in Ibanez, the proof falls far short of establishing that Ohio consumers have been misled by dairy-product labeling. We need not address this issue further, however, because we conclude that the Rule does not directly advance the State's interest and is more extensive than necessary to serve that interest. These last two steps of the Central Hudson test are complementary. They involve asking whether the speech restriction is not more extensive than necessary to serve the interests that support it. Lorillard Tobacco Co. v. Reilly, 533 U.S. 525, 556, 121 S.Ct. 2404, 150 L.Ed.2d 532 (2001) (citation omitted). Accordingly, there must be a reasonable fit between the legislature's ends and the means chosen to accomplish those ends, a means narrowly tailored to achieve the desired objective. Id. (citation, ellipsis, and internal quotation marks omitted). [I]f there are numerous and obvious less-burdensome alternatives to the restriction on commercial speech, that is certainly a relevant consideration in determining whether the `fit' between ends and means is reasonable. City of Cincinnati v. Discovery Network, Inc., 507 U.S. 410, 417 n. 13, 113 S.Ct. 1505, 123 L.Ed.2d 99 (1993). We agree with the Processors that the potential consumer confusion created by the composition claim rbST free could be alleviated by accompanying the claim with a disclaimer informing consumers that rbST has yet to be detected in conventional milk. Examples of possible disclaimers include a statement regarding the lack of evidence that conventional milk contains rbST, or even the disclaimer already required by the Rule to accompany production claims: The FDA has determined that no significant difference has been shown between milk derived from rbST-supplemented and non-rbST-supplemented cows. The district court rejected the use of a disclaimer to cure any confusion caused by the claim rbST free, reasoning that such a statement would only serve to confuse a consumer. In the district court's view, the label would contain contradictory informationit would say a product is `free' of rbST, but at the same time state that there is no rbST in other products, which defeats the purpose of making the claim in the first place. But this conclusion rests on the assumption that conventional milk has conclusively been shown to be free of rbST, when in fact that possibility remains an open question. The claim rbST free, when used in conjunction with an appropriate disclaimer, could assure consumers that the substance is definitively not in milk so labeled while also advising them that it has yet to be detected in conventional milk. There thus exists a method by which the potential difference between the two types of milk can be presented without also being deceptive. See In re R.M.J., 455 U.S. 191, 203, 102 S.Ct. 929, 71 L.Ed.2d 64 (1982) ([T]he States may not place an absolute prohibition on certain types of potentially misleading information ... if the information also may be presented in a way that is not deceptive.). For these reasons, we conclude that the Rule's prophylactic ban of composition claims such as rbST free is more extensive than necessary to serve the State's interest in preventing consumer deception. This provision of the Rule therefore cannot withstand scrutiny under Central Hudson.