When the Supreme Court Said a Conversation Is Not Conduct

What Chiles v. Salazar means for what a Florida document preparer is allowed to say

We operate a legal information site for Florida's citizens at JusticeXpressFlorida so we monitor Florida rules on unauthorizedpractic of law.

A Game Changing Case

On March 31, 2026, the United States Supreme Court decided a case about a counselor in Colorado Springs. It had nothing to do with legal forms, nothing to do with Florida, and nothing to do with the price of a lawyer.

It may still turn out to be the most important case of the decade for Floridians who cannot afford one.

What the Court actually held

Kaley Chiles is a licensed professional counselor. Colorado prohibited licensed counselors from engaging in "conversion therapy" with clients under eighteen. Chiles argued that the law regulated nothing but her speech — she does not prescribe, operate, or administer anything. She talks.

Colorado's answer was the answer states always give: this isn't a speech restriction, it's a regulation of professional conduct. Talking is just how the conduct happens to get delivered. The federal district court and the Tenth Circuit accepted that framing and applied the most forgiving standard of review available.

The Supreme Court reversed, 8–1, in an opinion by Justice Gorsuch. Chiles v. Salazar, 146 S. Ct. 1010 (2026).

Three parts of the reasoning matter here.

First, the Court refused to let a state relabel speech as conduct. A law that "generally functions as a regulation of conduct" does not escape serious First Amendment review when the state applies it to someone whose entire violation consists of speaking. The Court had said this before, in Cohen v. California and Holder v. Humanitarian Law Project, and it said it again.

Second, holding a professional license does not lower the constitutional ceiling. The Court reaffirmed NIFLA v. Becerra (2018): there is no general category called "professional speech" that receives reduced protection. The narrow exceptions that do exist "do not turn on the fact" that a licensed professional happens to be the one talking.

Third, states cannot assemble a new exception out of spare parts. Colorado urged the Court to stack up various historical traditions of regulating professionals into a general authority over speech it considered substandard. The Court declined, warning against creating a "First Amendment Free Zone."

Why a case about a therapist matters to a document preparer

Because the Florida Bar's central position rests on exactly the framing the Supreme Court just rejected.

Florida has never codified a definition of the practice of law. The operative test comes from a 1962 case, State ex rel. Florida Bar v. Sperry: it is the practice of law whenever legal knowledge and skill are required and the public needs protecting. That standard is enforced through Chapter 10 of the Rules Regulating The Florida Bar, and behind it sits section 454.23 of the Florida Statutes, which makes unlicensed practice a third-degree felony.

Applied to document preparation, the line was drawn in The Florida Bar v. Brumbaugh (1978) and has barely moved since. A nonlawyer may type what a customer supplies. A nonlawyer may not tell the customer which form to use, what a term means, or how to answer a question on it.

Read that line again and notice what it is. It is not a restriction on what a document preparer may do. It is a restriction on what a document preparer may say. The typing is permitted. The sentence is the crime.

That is the Chiles problem in one line.

The part of Florida law almost nobody notices

Here is the detail that ought to be at the center of this conversation.

Florida already permits nonlawyers to help members of the public complete court forms — in family law. Under Rule 12.750 of the Florida Family Law Rules of Procedure, the state operates self-help programs where nonlawyer personnel assist self-represented litigants with Supreme Court-approved family law forms. Divorce. Custody. Child support. Some of the highest-stakes, most emotionally fraught proceedings in the entire civil system.

Now consider a Floridian who has been sued by a debt buyer for $2,800. Or one who needs to respond to an eviction complaint. Or one who wants to file a small claims answer.

For that person, the same assistance is a felony.

The state has already decided, in the area where the consequences are arguably gravest, that a trained nonlawyer walking someone through an approved form is safe enough to be a government program. It has not explained why the identical help, on a simpler form, in a lower-stakes case, becomes a crime.

That is not a line drawn by necessity. It is a line drawn by policy — and under Chiles, policy lines that determine who may speak about what topic have to be justified, not merely asserted.

Justified by what, exactly?

Which brings us to harm.

Every unauthorized practice rule in America is defended as consumer protection. That is a serious interest, and nobody should wave it away. But an interest is not a justification unless the restriction is actually tailored to it — and tailoring requires evidence.

In 2021, the Florida Supreme Court decided The Florida Bar v. TIKD Services, LLC. TIKD was an app that connected drivers with Florida-licensed attorneys to fight traffic tickets and paid the lawyers' fees. The referee — a sitting circuit judge — found no unlicensed practice and no evidence the public was at risk, and recommended dismissal.

The Court reversed, 4–3. And in doing so it held something remarkable: the Bar is not required to prove actual harm. The potential for harm is enough.

Three justices dissented. They pointed out that every lawyer TIKD matched was a Florida Bar member subject to discipline, that no malpractice or even dissatisfaction had been identified, and that the record could not support a finding that the public needed the Bar's protection at all.

So, Florida's own high court has stated, in a published opinion, that it will restrict this activity without demonstrating that anyone was hurt.

Meanwhile, two states ran the experiment. Utah opened a regulated sandbox in 2020 permitting nonlawyers and software to deliver legal services under supervision and mandatory data reporting. Through its September 2024 activity report, sandbox entities delivered 117,370 legal services. As of April 2025, the office had received twenty consumer complaints — cumulatively, over nearly five years. That is well under one hundredth of one percent. Arizona, which eliminated its Rule 5.4 and has licensed 136 alternative business structures, has brought exactly two entity disciplinary matters in five years, both resolved by consent.

Reasonable people can argue about what those numbers prove. Complaint data undercounts; consumers who never learn they were harmed never complain. But the numbers are what exist, and they point in one direction.

What this means for the 80 percent

Most Floridians facing a civil legal problem do not choose between a good lawyer and a mediocre document preparer. They choose between some help and no help at all.

At prevailing rates — commonly cited in the range of $300 an hour and up — a routine matter costs more than many households have in savings. The overwhelming majority of Floridians in high-volume civil courts appear without counsel, and the most common outcome in a consumer debt case is not a bad settlement. It is a default judgment, because the defendant never filed anything.

The consumer protection rationale assumes the alternative to unlicensed help is licensed help. For most people, it isn't. The alternative is silence.

What we are not saying

Two honest caveats, because we would rather be trusted than excited.

First, Chiles did not decide this question. It involved a licensed counselor and a viewpoint-based restriction. Whether its reasoning extends to unauthorized practice rules is an open question that courts have not yet answered.

Second, the leading test case has not gone well. Upsolve, the nonprofit that trained volunteers to help New Yorkers answer debt collection suits, won a preliminary injunction in 2022 — and then lost it. The Second Circuit vacated in September 2025, holding the rules content-neutral, and in March 2026 the district court upheld them and dismissed the case. A petition for certiorari is before the Supreme Court. Anyone telling you this is settled is not telling you the truth.

And to be clear about our own operations: Florida law today is what it is. Our JusticeXpressFlorida web site operates within it. Our Legal Document Preparer review is limited to completeness, consistency, and format. Questions about your legal rights, options, or strategy require a licensed Florida attorney. That is the rule, and we follow it while we argue that it should change.

The question worth asking

Florida is entitled to protect its citizens from incompetent legal help. It is not obviously entitled to do so by making a conversation a felony, without ever showing that the conversation hurt anyone, while eighty percent of the people it is protecting cannot afford the only alternative it permits.

Chiles v. Salazar did not answer that question. It made it a great deal harder to avoid.

This article is general legal information, not legal advice, and no attorney-client relationship is created by reading it. Court decisions and rules change. For advice about your situation, consult a licensed Florida attorney.