Chiles v. Salazar · ¶63

Colorado and the dissent close by asking us to analogize the State's law to traditional tort malpractice claims. See Brief for Respondents 25–26; post, at 685–686 (opinion of Jackson, J.). But here again the differences are impossible to ignore. In a traditional malpractice action, liability attaches only if the plaintiff shows, among other things, that he has suffered an injury caused by the defendant's breach of the applicable duty of care. See, e. g., Day v. Johnson, 255 P. 3d 1064, 1068–1069 (Colo. 2011). Those kinds of “[e]xacting proof requirements,” we have observed, may “provide sufficient breathing room for protected speech.” Illinois ex rel. Madigan v. Telemarketing Associates, Inc., 538 U. S. 600, 620 (2003). Yet Colorado's law contains nothing like them, instead threatening individuals with fines, probation, and the loss of their licenses simply for expressing a particular…

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