IANAL, but I don’t think you should set people on fire, because that’s illegal.
Crap, I think I just broke the law by offering legal advice without a license to practice!
Based on everything I’ve seen, I’m going to have to quite emphatically disagree with you here. Obviously, a lawyer or a doctor with formal training and accreditation and lots of experience is going to provide more value and in-depth guidance than any book could possibly do, but that isn’t the debate here and that self-evident fact isn’t the point. The point, in my view, is that these books do most definitely offer specific guidance and advice, and within the limitations of what a book can do, they can often be perfectly legal substitutes for the corresponding professional practitioner, especially in law where you don’t have insurmountable obstacles to the layman like needing prescription medication or surgical intervention. And I notice that many of these law books are written by lawyers, which they would hardly be doing if it was a shady practice.
I know for a fact that this is the case in the medical field, where some websites actually guide you interactively through symptomatic diagnosis, or provide advice and cautions about various prescription medications. I haven’t really delved into law books, but here’s one about business law that explicitly claims that it can be a substitute for the expense of a lawyer: " legal questions crop up on an almost daily basis … but hiring a lawyer to help with routine issues can devastate the bottom line." And one of the reviews claims that it “Balances its wealth of reproducible documents with straightforward ‘how-to’ instructions and advice…”
Sounds pretty specific, concrete, factual, and step-by-step to me. And nobody is being sued, or ever has been, AFAIK, for publishing this kind of how-to book.
And certainly specific and concrete in terms of the kinds of books that could be published whether or not this California law existed. ISTM that this is just a case of conservatives inventing ludicrous reasons for trying to stop progressive action against fraudulent practitioners of useless conversion “therapies”.
And “a book”, let alone one sold to the general population, is not in that list, amazingly enough.
Again, please provide some citation that a book has been held as “practice.”
As to if a self-help book counts as “practice” - according to the American Bar Association the courts have ruled:
(Under comment 1.)
A book is a “good,” and that puts it in the reach of the statute.
Only if the book itself is claimed to have the magical power to change your sexual orientation.
Which, to be fair, some books may claim to be able to do.
At which point, yeah, I think you should be able to sue them for selling you a faulty product. (Unless it works, I suppose.)
No, it doesn’t. Because while the overall statute mentions regulation of goods or services, the provision in question does not mention goods; while other provisions in the statute do.
Under the common sense interpretation of statutes, as you have so often explained, the legislature says what it means and means what it says.
(a) explains that defined “goods OR services” may be prohibited. (28) prohibits certain “advertising” or “efforts.” Do you generally define books as an “effort?” I would say an “effort” is a type of “service.”
You are, at best, confused.
It is specific language explicitly referencing a specific service being added to a section that deals with both goods and services.
Bolding and italics mine.
The clearly expressed intent - to make clear that the commercial service of changing sexual orientation, that practice, is deceptive and unlawful under this statute.
The proposal adding to existing law the definition that in this law “effort” means “practice”, something that is a commercial service not a good:
And using that explicit definition of efforts = practices = a commercial service, it adds to the list of goods or services that are unlawful by virtue of being unfair or deceptive:
This deceptive service is now explicitly included in the itemized list of goods or services that are unlawful under this statute. Nothing more than that.
Looking at that section in full:
It’s saying that everything following (numbered from 1 to 28) are “unfair methods of competition and unfair or deceptive acts or practices.” They can’t result in the sale of a good, but what’s listed in numbers 1 to 28 are all “unfair methods of competition and unfair or deceptive acts or practices”, not goods.
Do any of the posters here who are so adamant about following the plain letter of the law that they think it’s so laughable and ludicrous that the idea should be dismissed outright, that publishing or selling a book which purports to offer advice on changing one’s sexual orientation, could be construed as “advertising, offering to engage in, or engaging in sexual orientation change efforts with an individual,” and therefore banned under this law, think it’s any less of a stretch for the statement “nor shall any state deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law” to be construed as guaranteeing a Constitutional right to abortion or same-sex marriage?
I’m not sure where you’re trying to go with this, and I also don’t know what your political views are, so I assure you I’m not trying to confront them, but merely expressing my heartfelt views. And they are the following.
No law, and no constitutional protection, however well crafted and well-intentioned, is immune from abusive re-interpretation by zealots and ideologues seeking their own self-serving objectives. We’ve seen this happen over and over, for example in the First Amendment being construed to guarantee the unlimited corrupting influence of money in politics in the name of free speech, or the right of employers who happen to be religious zealots to impose their values on their employees in the name of “religious freedom”.
The problem is not the laws, nor is the problem rooted in good and valid constitutional protections. The problem is that the exact same intransigent ideologues who oppose this measure in California – this necessary protection against fraudsters – using fake imaginary scare tactics are exactly the same ideologues who have also been abusing and misinterpreting many other good laws and constitutional protections and twisting their interpretations to their own self-serving interests.
The problem, in other words, is not the laws, but a certain cadre of idiot voters who seem to lack the basic capability of democratic self-governance. If you can’t enact good and necessary laws for fear that some idiot court-ruled interpretation will put a totally idiotic spin on it for stupid ideological reasons, then you really don’t have a functional democracy.
I’m also not following the run-on question, and would be happy to try to give a thoughtful answer if you could restate it.
But there’s a substantial difference between the language in this statute and the part of the Constitution that you quote. The key part of the statute is written quite specifically and clearly, IMHO, to deal with “services” of a type and not goods (even though other provisions deal with goods or goods and services). And there’s also a definition provided to give additional clarity to what “services” are being regulated.
The Constitution contains an awful lot of vague provisions, with an awful lot of room for debate about what “liberty” and “due process” may be. Of course, courts have refined those terms over the years, but that only reinforces that such terms are pretty vague to begin with.
Simple answer if I parse the question correctly: applying this law, which takes makes itself very clear that its intent is to apply to advertising for the provision of the commercial service, the fraudulent practice, of sexual reorientation, is a completely different thing than interpreting what you quote for its meaning.
Really nothing in common.
Now a similarity could come up in the future regarding say an AI based interactive computer program that purported to have some success at sexual reorientation. In that case there would be arguments as to whether of not such a thing was a not specified within the amended law good, or a service, which by its AI nature was specific to the individual. In that case the courts would look at precedence for how such things as legal programs and medical programs have been handled - have they been considered as disallowed as practice without a license or considered goods? They’d decide if such precedence fairly applied to this case. Or if goods that are fraudulent are already disallowed by law.
That could be interesting.
And a discussion of the hypothetical might be productive: should a book that clearly fraudulently claims it can help you do something that is impossible be regulated in some way or should freedom of speech apply to advertising that this book will cure your child’s cancer or whatever fraudulent claim one can think of?
I’m of mixed mind.
The textbooks for courses in chiropractic and homeopathy, and the reference books for “practitioners” of those “disciplines”, would certainly make for interesting cases, as their disappearance could conceivably directly contribute to shutting down thousands of schools and clinics.
Now there is a Facebook meme floating around saying “Jerry Brown wants ban bibles!”
I’m with Richard Parker. This law arguably bans books. And you know what? That’s okay. I am perfectly alright with the legislature using its power to ban Dr. Fakedoctorate’s Home Psychiatry Guide.
The Due Process Clause doesn’t guarantee “a Constitutional right to… same-sex marriage.” It guarantees a right to marry - something nobody disputes. The Equal Protection Clause does the rest.
I agree with you. If the Legislature has decided that this “conversion” therapy is junk science (the evidence seems to suggest that it is) which actually harms people, then I have no problem with it being banned, along with the literature which implements it.
However, I share Richard Parker’s concerns. At what level of generality do we ban the expression of the belief that homosexuality is wrong and that those predisposed to homosexuality should “choose” not to engage in it? I agree that “banning Bibles” is a bit hyperbolic in this debate, but I can see how an aggressive implementation of this law could get there, at least banning Leviticus.
As far as banning quackery, I would love for Trump to appoint enough judges to put this type of legal thought in the dustbin of history. 
So your okay with the government banning books and speech it does not like? I see a few potential downsides to this approach.
You’re not understanding my argument. The statute expressly lists “efforts to change” as a “practice.” So the question isn’t best answered by inquiring whether a book is a “practice.” Instead, it is answered by whether a book is an “effort.” Quite obviously, it can be.
Although the ABA’s opinions do not control the scope of state statutes, I think that particular comment is basically correct. It is only when self-help books offer advice about particular and specific circumstances or objectives that they constitute legal advice. That is why they do not generally do so. But it is a line that can be crossed.
I do not read the ABA’s comment to mean that no self-help book can constitute the practice of law. If that’s how it is intended, then I think they are simply mistaken.
Here’s a good law review article discussing the lead cases on self-help as unauthorized practice. In it, you’ll find a number of cases holding that books crossed the line: https://mckinneylaw.iu.edu/ILR/pdf/vol34p121.pdf