H.B. 5483, An Act Concerning Deceptive Advertising Practices of Pregnancy Centers

House Bill 5483 is an insidious attempt to eliminate the nascent Public Act 21-17, a narrowly tailored law that addresses documented6 instances of deceptive advertising by CPCs. House Bill 5483 is designed to remove any trace of “limited services pregnancy centers” from last year’s law while still retaining the deceptive advertising language but altered to apply only to pregnancy services centers. This is deeply problematic for a litany of reasons. First and most importantly, Section 1 completely undermines Public Act 21-17 passed by a majority of both chambers of this legislature and signed into law by our governor. Second, House Bill 5483 removes any traces of CPCs from law, where there is voluminous documented evidence of deceptive advertising to target actual medical clinics offering pregnancy services, where there has been no documented evidence of deceptive advertising. House Bill 5483 attempts to morph current law to shield CPCs from accountability for deceptive speech while seemingly targeting medical clinics that do offer abortion or emergency contraception-related services, where there has been no evidence of deceptive speech. As such, the ACLU-CT strongly opposes House Bill 5483 and strongly urges this Committee to do the same.