Minnesota law trampled horse massage instructor’s free speech, judge ruled

What does horse massage have to do with the First Amendment?

A federal court weighed in recently on a legal challenge brought by a Becker, Minn., woman when state regulators warned her to get a license or risk getting a “neigh” on her equine massage courses.

A Minnesota U.S. District Court judge ruled last month that horse massage instructor Leda Mox may continue teaching her equine courses and blocked the state from enforcing its licensure requirements on her program.

In his order, U.S. District Judge Eric Tostrud said Minnesota’s Private Career School Act, the law requiring private vocational schools to be licensed, was initiated only when Mox taught (and therefore spoke) about horse massage through her company, Armstrong Equine Massage. Tostrud ruled that Mox’s First Amendment rights were therefore inhibited indirectly by the state trying to enforce cumbersome regulations.

Minnesota’s ”licensing requirements may concern things Armstrong must do to obtain and maintain licensure, but as discussed, these requirements are triggered by the content and purpose of Ms. Mox and Armstrong’s speech,” Tostrud said in an Oct. 24 order.

For more than a decade, Mox has taught equine massage from her farm in Becker to more than 400 students. Her courses show the value of massage for alleviating pain and discomfort and improving mobility in horses. The benefits, Mox told the Minnesota Star Tribune, are similar to those for human athletes.

Mox, who has a bachelor’s degree in equine science from the University of Minnesota-Crookston, remembers seeing those benefits when she entered an older horse in a barrel racing competition. If she didn’t “stretch him out” before the race, her horse would stumble after the first barrel. Massage became part of her pre-competition routine. She learned that she could turn it into a career and launched Armstrong Equine Massage in 2013 to teach the practice to her clientele of recreational riders and the occasional aspiring veterinarian.

“This is not a million-dollar model,” she said, adding that her profits pay for her horses’ care, including winter hay and barriers.

Mox said her confusion only grew when she called the Minnesota Department of Education before launching to ask what steps she should take to make her business legitimate. Mox said the man who answered asked her to repeat herself when she explained what she would teach.

“I’m like, horse massage,” she said. “And he’s like, ‘I think you’re good,’ and he kind of laughed at me.”

After discovering the high fees she might be facing, Mox contacted the Institute for Justice, a national nonprofit law firm that specializes in cases against the government, and a lawsuit was filed in 2023.

Bobbi Taylor, Mox’s attorney, argued that Armstrong Equine Massage is smaller than the types of fraudulent programs that the Private School Act is meant to restrict, such as “diploma mills,” or unaccredited institutions that offer degrees with little or no coursework in exchange for a fee. Mox doesn’t grant degrees or keep transcripts, and she has only a handful of students per class, unlike the schools described in the state’s law, Taylor said. She compared Mox’s courses to other forms of instruction meant to teach specific skills, such as modeling or fitness teacher programs, which are exempt from such regulation.

Asked for a response to the ruling, a spokesperson for the Minnesota Office of Higher Education said that the office “will be looking at potential policy changes that align with the interpretation, while still fulfilling our responsibility to student and consumer protection.”

Mox said she was finishing chores at her barn late at night when she received a text about the ruling. “That was pretty good,” she said.

She said the lengthy legal battle was tough for the self-described “rule follower.”