Foundational Freedom

Professor Claudia E. Haupt, a First Amendment expert, delivered Northeastern University’s Constitution Day Lecture on September 19, 2024. In her remarks, Haupt focused on the intersection of free speech, the First Amendment and public health and provided multiple examples of the clash between public health and free speech, particularly in the context of the medical profession.

While the American Medical Association offers ethical guidance for physicians who may be inclined to provide health information on social media, Haupt told the audience that the “quality of advice is not secured by the same legal guardrails as advice within the doctor-patient relationship.”

“The underlying idea is that everyone is equal in public discourse,” she said. “When we’re talking about the discussion of ideas in general — as frequently happens on social media — we don’t have malpractice liability, and we don’t have the same ideas about content and viewpoint regulation that we have within the professional relationship.”

When it comes to speech by government officials, Haupt said, there are essentially no First Amendment restrictions. “The government can basically choose its own message. Nobody says that the government has to be anti-smoking or anti-obesity. The government can pick and choose its own message without any First Amendment limits to what it can say.”

Haupt also discussed contemporary problems of public health information on social media. “These are really interesting questions that can be truly problematic as a matter of social media regulation,” said Haupt, author of the forthcoming book Professional Speech.