Stonewater Roofing, Ltd. Co. v. Texas Department of Insurance and Kent Sullivan, in His Official Capacity as Commissioner of the Texas Department of Insurance, 07-21-00016-CV

Texas enacted chapter 4102 (2005) regulating public insurance adjusting: contractors may not act as public adjusters (or advertise to do so) for properties where they provide contracting services; licensed public adjusters may not provide contracting services on properties where they adjust claims.
Stonewater Roofing (not a licensed public adjuster) advertises insurance-claims expertise on its website and used form language authorizing negotiation on customers’ behalf; a customer sued it under chapter 4102.
Stonewater sued the Texas Department of Insurance (TDI) and the Commissioner, seeking declaratory relief that the prohibitions are facially and as-applied invalid under the First and Fourteenth Amendments.
TDI moved to dismiss under Texas Rule of Civil Procedure 91a (no basis in law or fact); the trial court granted dismissal without explanation.
The court of appeals reviewed de novo, construed pleadings liberally for fair notice, and held Stonewater adequately pleaded First Amendment and facial vagueness claims, reversed the dismissal, and remanded.

Issue	Plaintiff's Argument	Defendant's Argument	Held
Whether chapter 4102 implicates the First Amendment	Chapter 4102 restricts commercial speech and facially regulates speech based on content and speaker; thus it is content- and speaker-based and must survive strict scrutiny (or at minimum Central Hudson intermediate scrutiny).	The statutes regulate non-expressive professional conduct (unlicensed adjusting), not speech; any speech effects are incidental, so First Amendment scrutiny does not apply or only rational-basis review does.	The court held the prohibitions regulate speech (communications intrinsic to adjusting), are content- and speaker-based, and are therefore subject to strict scrutiny; alternatively, even if incidental, commercial-speech intermediate scrutiny applies. Pleadings survive Rule 91a.
Whether chapter 4102 is unconstitutionally vague under the Fourteenth Amendment	The statute fails to give fair notice what speech or conduct is prohibited and thus is facially vague, chilling protected speech; Stonewater’s specific statements were not clearly proscribed.	Stonewater’s conduct/statements are clearly proscribed by the statute, so a vagueness challenge (as-applied) fails and dismissal was proper.	The court found TDI did not adequately rebut the facial vagueness claim and that Stonewater’s cited statements were not clearly proscribed; Stonewater sufficiently pleaded a facial vagueness claim to survive Rule 91a.

Reed v. Town of Gilbert, 576 U.S. 155 (2015) (content-based speech restrictions trigger strict scrutiny)
Nat'l Inst. of Family & Life Advocates v. Becerra, 138 S. Ct. 2361 (2018) (speech by professionals is protected; warns against a broad "professional speech" exception)
Sorrell v. IMS Health Inc., 564 U.S. 552 (2011) (law that is both content- and speaker-based requires heightened scrutiny)
Holder v. Humanitarian Law Project, 561 U.S. 1 (2010) (certain communicative acts constitute speech and receive First Amendment protection)
Bartnicki v. Vopper, 532 U.S. 514 (2001) (dissemination of information is speech)
Central Hudson Gas & Electric Corp. v. Public Service Commission, 447 U.S. 557 (1980) (intermediate-scrutiny test for commercial speech)
Barr v. American Ass'n of Political Consultants, Inc., 140 S. Ct. 2335 (2020) (content-based restrictions are presumptively unconstitutional)