Friedman v. Rogers
Supreme Court
440 U.S. 1 (1979)
A Texas statute barred practicing optometry under a trade name and required four of the six members of the state's optometry regulatory board to belong to the Texas Optometric Association, a professional organization. Optometrist Rogers (plaintiff) sued a board official, Friedman (defendant), in federal district court, challenging the trade-name ban and board-composition requirement as violating the First and Fourteenth Amendments; the district court found the trade-name ban an unconstitutional restriction on commercial speech, and Friedman appealed to the Supreme Court.
Whether a state may ban the use of trade names in a licensed profession without violating the First Amendment, and whether requiring a majority of a professional regulatory board to belong to a professional association violates equal protection.