Hines v. Pardue: What the Supreme Court's Decision Means for Veterinary Telemedicine in 2026

Recently the U.S. Supreme Court denied certiorari in Hines v. Pardue, leaving in place a Fifth Circuit ruling that fundamentally changes how state veterinary boards can regulate online consultations. The holding, in plain English: a state cannot discipline a veterinarian for the content of online veterinary advice without running afoul of the First Amendment. The decision is binding in Texas, Louisiana, and Mississippi, and it is highly persuasive everywhere else.

For practicing veterinarians, the ruling cracks open the door to telemedicine in a way the profession has never seen. But it does not, contrary to some of the commentary already circulating, abolish the VCPR or shield veterinarians from malpractice liability. This article walks through what the case decided, what it did not decide, and what veterinarians should do about it starting today.

Who is Dr. Ron Hines, and why did this case take a decade?

Dr. Ron Hines is a retired, partially disabled veterinarian living in Brownsville, Texas. Since 2002, he has run a website offering pet care advice to a global audience. Roughly half of the people who reach out to him write from outside the United States. He charges modest fees, donates to animal welfare groups, and, by every account in the public record, has never harmed a patient.

In 2012, the Texas State Board of Veterinary Medical Examiners fined him $500 and suspended his license for offering online advice without first conducting a physical examination. The basis for the discipline was the in-person veterinarian-client-patient relationship (VCPR) requirement, the same rule that sits at the foundation of state veterinary practice acts across the country.

That $500 fine launched a decade of federal litigation that traveled up and down the appellate ladder three separate times. The case became the first serious constitutional test of whether state veterinary boards can regulate online consultations as if they were the practice of medicine, or whether such consultations are protected speech.

In 2024, the Fifth Circuit ruled in Hines's favor. This year the Supreme Court declined to take up the state's appeal, letting the Fifth Circuit's decision stand as the controlling law in three states and as a powerful precedent everywhere else.

No patient was ever harmed. The dispute was always, at its core, about who gets to talk to a pet owner about a sick animal, and on what terms.

What did the Fifth Circuit actually rule?

The Fifth Circuit held that the content of an online veterinary consultation is speech protected by the First Amendment, and that a state veterinary board cannot sanction a veterinarian for the substance of that speech without satisfying the same level of constitutional scrutiny that would apply to any other regulation of speech.

That sounds technical, but the consequence is direct: the State of Texas could no longer fine Dr. Hines $500 for the words he wrote to pet owners online, because those words were speech, not the practice of medicine.

To understand why the Fifth Circuit reached that conclusion, you have to understand the death of the Professional Speech Doctrine.

For decades, courts treated speech by licensed professionals (doctors, lawyers, veterinarians) as a separate, lesser category of First Amendment protection. The theory was that the state's licensing power gave it broad authority to regulate what professionals said inside their professional role. That doctrine effectively disappeared in 2018, when the Supreme Court decided NIFLA v. Becerra. NIFLA held that professional speech is not a distinct category entitled to reduced First Amendment scrutiny. Speech is speech, whether the speaker has a license or not.

The Fifth Circuit applied that principle to Hines. Once professional speech is just speech, a state board fining a veterinarian for the words on his website looks a lot like a state agency fining a newspaper columnist for what she wrote.

The Supreme Court's denial of certiorari does not create binding national precedent. A cert denial is, technically, no decision at all. But it does mean that the Fifth Circuit's ruling is now the final word in Texas, Louisiana, and Mississippi, and it signals that the Court was not eager to disturb the reasoning.

Is veterinary telemedicine now legal without a VCPR?

This is the question being asked in every veterinary Facebook group right now, and the honest answer is more nuanced than a yes or no.

The state cannot regulate the speech component of an online consultation. It can still regulate the conduct.

Telemedicine is more legally protected than it was a year ago. It is not unregulated. The VCPR has not been abolished, repealed, or struck down. What has changed is that a state board cannot use the absence of an in-person VCPR as the basis for discipline if the only thing the veterinarian did was speak (write, type, advise) to a pet owner about an animal's condition.

The moment a veterinarian crosses from speaking to doing (writing a prescription, ordering a procedure, directing a specific course of treatment), the analysis shifts. That is conduct, and conduct is still fully regulated under state practice acts.

The line between the two is where the entire compliance picture now lives.

What is the difference between "speech" and "conduct" in veterinary medicine?

This distinction is the single most important takeaway from Hines. It is also where the most expensive mistakes will happen over the next 24 months.

The Fifth Circuit did not draw a clean bright line, but the reasoning of the case, combined with general First Amendment doctrine, gives a workable framework. Consider how the same factual scenario (a pet owner asks about giving Benadryl to a dog) can fall on either side of the line depending on the words the veterinarian chooses.

Statement	Classification
"Give your dog 50 mg of Benadryl."	Conduct (prescriptive direction)
"For a dog this size, you could give two Bendadryl."	Gray zone, depends on context
"Generally, dogs of this size receive 50 mg of diphenhydramine for this type of reaction."	Speech (general educational advice)
Writing a prescription, electronic or paper	Conduct
Maintaining medical records	Conduct
Performing or recommending surgery	Conduct

The pattern is not arbitrary. Speech is general, educational, and directed at the listener's understanding. Conduct is specific, prescriptive, and directed at the listener's action. A statement that informs a pet owner about what veterinarians generally do in a given scenario is speech. A statement that tells this owner what to do for this animal is conduct.

The word choice matters. The setting matters. The medical record matters. Two veterinarians could send messages that read nearly identically and end up on opposite sides of this line because of context that surrounds the words.

The practical implication is that veterinarians providing online consultations should be auditing their language and, where possible, shifting toward educational framing. That is not a way to escape responsibility; it is a way to keep the work properly classified.

Does Hines v. Pardue apply outside Texas, Louisiana, and Mississippi?

The Fifth Circuit covers Texas, Louisiana, and Mississippi. In those three states, Hines is binding precedent. A veterinary board in any of those states that disciplines a veterinarian for the content of online advice will lose in federal court.

Everywhere else, Hines is persuasive authority. Other federal circuits are not required to follow it, but they will read it carefully when the same issue arrives in their courts. Some will likely follow the reasoning. Others may try to distinguish it, or rule the other way.

If two or more federal circuits split (one adopts Hines's reasoning, another rejects it), that split is what would eventually force the Supreme Court to take a case on the merits and resolve the question nationwide. Until then, veterinarians outside the Fifth Circuit are practicing in an environment where the law is unsettled, but the wind is at their backs.

State legislatures and state veterinary boards are also paying attention. Several states have been moving toward telemedicine-friendly rules independently of Hines. The case will almost certainly accelerate that trend.

Does this ruling protect veterinarians from malpractice lawsuits?

No. This may be the single most important sentence in this article.

The First Amendment governs what the government can do to a citizen. Hines tells you what a state veterinary board cannot do. It says nothing about what a client can do.

Civil malpractice is a separate body of law. A pet owner who believes a veterinarian gave bad advice that harmed an animal can sue that veterinarian in state court for negligence. The standard there is not the First Amendment; it is the standard of care, which asks whether the veterinarian acted as a reasonably prudent veterinarian would have acted under similar circumstances.

A veterinarian who gives a piece of online advice that is fully protected speech under Hines, that the state board could never discipline, and that turns out to be wrong, can still be sued and held liable in a malpractice action.

The constitutional shield protects you from the government. It does not protect you from the plaintiff's bar.

This is the catch that most of the early commentary on Hines has glossed over. The decision opens telemedicine; it does not de-risk it. If anything, the wider you open your telemedicine practice, the more important your civil liability planning becomes.

What should veterinarians actually do differently starting tomorrow?

The action items break into six categories. None of them are theoretical.

Audit your telemedicine consult language. Read your last 50 client messages, chats, or emails. Mark every sentence that reads as prescriptive direction ("give," "do," "use this dose"). For each one, ask whether the same clinical information could be conveyed in educational framing instead. Where it can, change the script.

Update your informed consent forms. Every telemedicine intake should now include explicit client acknowledgment of the limits of remote evaluation, the absence (or presence) of an in-person VCPR, and what the consultation is and is not. Generic intake forms drafted before Hines are no longer sufficient.

Maintain medical records as if Hines did not exist. Records are conduct, not speech. They are still fully regulated by your state practice act. A board complaint that fails on the substance of your advice can still succeed on a records deficiency.

Carry both license defense and malpractice insurance. These are different products covering different risks. Hines shifts the relative weight of those risks, but it does not eliminate either. Veterinarians practicing significant telemedicine should be carrying both, and both at adequate limits.

Review your telemedicine platform contract. If you work shifts for Vetster, Pawp, Dutch, AirVet, Fuzzy, or any independent telehealth service, pull the indemnification provisions of your contract. In almost every case, the liability for the consultation sits with you, not the platform. Know what you signed.

If you practice in Texas, Louisiana, or Mississippi, document your reliance on Hines in your practice protocols. If a board inquiry ever lands on your desk, the file that shows your good-faith reliance on the controlling law of your circuit is the file that closes the inquiry quickly.

What didn't Hines v. Pardue change?

A quick inventory of what remains fully regulated, exactly as it was before the ruling:

Prescription authority. The right to issue a prescription is granted by state law and conditioned on a VCPR. Hines did not touch this.

Controlled substances. DEA registration, recordkeeping, and the federal controlled substances framework are entirely unaffected.

Medical records requirements. Every state practice act requires veterinarians to maintain medical records that meet minimum standards. Those obligations are about conduct, not speech, and remain in full force.

The VCPR itself, for conduct-based actions. Prescribing, surgery, anesthesia, and other treatment decisions still require an underlying VCPR in every state. Hines does not let you write a prescription for a dog you have never seen.

Civil liability. Already covered above, but worth repeating: nothing in Hines alters your exposure to a malpractice claim.

The reach of the decision is real, but it is bounded. The work of veterinary practice still happens largely in the regulated space, not the speech-protected one.

How Roasa Law Group helps veterinarians navigate the new landscape

Roasa Law Group represents veterinarians and veterinary practice owners nationwide. The areas where Hines most directly changes the work we do for clients include:

Telemedicine compliance reviews. We audit consult scripts, intake forms, and platform contracts and tell you, in writing, where your exposure sits.

Platform contract review. Before you sign with a telemedicine company, or when your existing contract comes up for renewal, we read the indemnification, liability, and termination provisions with your specific risk profile in mind.

Practice transaction work. If you are buying, selling, or evaluating a practice with a telehealth component, the valuation and the diligence both look different post-Hines. We handle the transaction with that in mind.

To schedule a consultation, visit roasalaw.com or email attorney@roasalaw.com.

Frequently Asked Questions

Can a veterinarian give medical advice online without an in-person exam?

After Hines v. Pardue, the content of online veterinary advice is protected First Amendment speech, and a state board cannot discipline a veterinarian for the substance of that advice. This is binding in Texas, Louisiana, and Mississippi, and persuasive in other states. However, prescribing medication, ordering procedures, or directing specific treatment is conduct rather than speech, and remains fully regulated. General educational guidance is treated differently from prescriptive direction.

Is a VCPR still required for veterinary telemedicine?

The veterinarian-client-patient relationship has not been abolished. A VCPR is still required for any conduct-based action: prescribing, surgery, treatment direction. What Hines changes is that a state board cannot use the absence of an in-person VCPR as the sole basis for disciplining a veterinarian who only spoke (provided general advice) to a pet owner online.

What states allow veterinary telemedicine without an in-person visit?

State rules vary widely. Hines v. Pardue is binding in Texas, Louisiana, and Mississippi, where state boards cannot discipline veterinarians for the content of online consultations. Several other states have independently adopted telemedicine-friendly rules. Many states still require an in-person VCPR for any prescribing or treatment direction. Veterinarians practicing across state lines should review the rules of each state where their clients are located.

What did NIFLA v. Becerra rule about professional speech?

In NIFLA v. Becerra (2018), the U.S. Supreme Court held that speech by licensed professionals is not a separate, lesser category of First Amendment protection. Before NIFLA, courts treated professional speech as subject to reduced scrutiny under the Professional Speech Doctrine. NIFLA effectively eliminated that doctrine, and that change in the law is what made the Fifth Circuit's reasoning in Hines possible.

Can a state veterinary board discipline me for online advice after Hines?

A state board within the Fifth Circuit (Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi) cannot discipline a veterinarian for the content of online veterinary advice, because that content is protected First Amendment speech. Outside the Fifth Circuit, the question is unsettled, but Hines is persuasive authority that veterinarians and their counsel can cite. State boards retain full authority to discipline for conduct-based violations, including prescribing without a VCPR, recordkeeping failures, and standard-of-care violations.

What is the difference between speech and conduct in veterinary practice?

Speech is general, educational, and directed at the listener's understanding. Conduct is specific, prescriptive, and directed at the listener's action. Telling a pet owner that veterinarians typically use diphenhydramine for a certain type of reaction in dogs of a certain size is speech. Telling a specific pet owner to give a specific dose to a specific dog is conduct. Writing prescriptions, maintaining medical records, and ordering procedures are always conduct.

Does the First Amendment protect veterinarians from malpractice claims?

No. The First Amendment governs what the government can do to a citizen. It does not govern civil lawsuits between private parties. A client who believes a veterinarian's advice caused harm can sue for negligence, and the standard of care, not the First Amendment, controls the outcome. Hines provides no protection against civil malpractice suits.

How should I document a telemedicine consultation legally?

Document the consultation as carefully as you would document an in-person visit. Medical records are conduct, not speech, and remain fully regulated. Best practice after Hines includes: a written intake with client acknowledgment of the limits of remote evaluation, a contemporaneous note of the consultation, clear identification of any advice as general or specific, and retention of all communications. Practices in Texas, Louisiana, and Mississippi should also document reliance on Hines in their compliance protocols.

Have questions about how Hines v. Pardue affects your practice?

Roasa Law Group represents veterinarians nationwide in board defense, telemedicine compliance, and licensure matters.

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This article is for general informational purposes only and is not legal advice. Reading this article does not create an attorney-client relationship with Roasa Law Group. For advice on your specific situation, contact us at attorney@roasalaw.com.