146
Opinion of the Court
The Board alternatively contends that Ibanez' use of the CFP designation is "potentially misleading," entitling the Board to "enact measures short of a total ban to prevent deception or confusion." Brief for Respondent 33, citing Peel, 496 U. S., at 116 (Marshall, J., joined by Brennan, J., concurring in judgment). If the "protections afforded commercial speech are to retain their force," Zauderer, 471 U. S., at 648-649, we cannot allow rote invocation of the words "potentially misleading" to supplant the Board's burden to "demonstrate that the harms it recites are real and that its restriction will in fact alleviate them to a material degree." Edenfield, 507 U. S., at 771.
The Board points to Rule 24.001(1)( j), Fla. Admin. Code § 61H1-24.001(1)( j) (1994), which prohibits use of any "specialist" designation unless accompanied by a disclaimer, made "in the immediate proximity of the statement that implies formal recognition as a specialist"; the disclaimer must "stat[e] that the recognizing agency is not affiliated with or sanctioned by the state or federal government," and it must set out the recognizing agency's "requirements for recognition, including, but not limited to, educatio[n], experience[,] and testing." See Brief for Respondent 33-35. Given the state of this record—the failure of the Board to point to any harm that is potentially real, not purely hypothetical—we are satisfied that the Board's action is unjustified. We express no opinion whether, in other situations or on a different record, the Board's insistence on a disclaimer might serve as an appropriately tailored check against deception or confusion, rather than one imposing "unduly burdensome disclosure requirements [that] offend the First Amendment." Zauderer, 471 U. S., at 651. This much is plain, however: The detail required in the disclaimer currently described by the Board effectively rules out notation of the "specialist"
or person was actually misled or deceived," nor "any factual finding of actual deception or misunderstanding").
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