Texas high court hears challenge over medical board order limiting candidate speech

At oral argument before the Texas Supreme Court on Oct. 5, 2025, lawyers for Ray Gonzales and the Texas Medical Board sparred over whether Gonzales’s challenge to a board cease-and-desist order is time-barred under the Administrative Procedure Act and whether the board may restrict a nonlicensed candidate’s campaign speech that uses medical credentials. Mister Hughes, counsel for petitioner Ray Gonzales, told the court that Gonzales “wants is to be able to talk to voters about how his credentials support his public policy without, a state agency telling him exactly how he's got to go about doing it or threatening him with future prosecution,” and argued the board’s own rule created an alternative path for judicial review that contained no filing deadline. The respondent, represented by Mister Kraft for the Texas Medical Board, told the court the court of appeals correctly affirmed dismissal of most of Gonzales’s suit because Gonzales sued months after the APA deadline for seeking judicial review, and the petition did not seek the prospective injunctive relief described in Patel. Why this matters: the case raises recurring questions about the limits of agency power to police speech in political campaigns, how…