Occupational licensing boards find new ways to censor

Private investigator Joshua Gray could have stayed silent when he read about a 2017 police shooting in Maine that left two people dead. Instead, Gray spoke up on Facebook about what he perceived as excessive use of force.

The First Amendment protected his speech, so Gray should have been safe from government backlash. But the Maine Department of Public Safety decided to punish him anyway for the criticism, which focused on two of its officers and a local police chief.

The chance for retaliation came when Gray tried to expand his Massachusetts-based business from Winchendon, a small town near New Hampshire, into Maine in 2018. Like most other states, Maine requires private investigators to obtain a government-issued occupational license. Applications in Maine go through the Department of Public Safety, the same agency that Gray had blasted on social media.