Eugene Volokh loses his shit over some Washington State regulations barring healthcare providers from imposing on patients for romantic or sexual relationships:

Say you live in Washington state, and you find yourself getting to know and becoming attracted to your dental hygienist–or for that matter your optician (that’s the person who fits your eyeglasses, based on the prescription provided by your optometrist). You’re interested in a romantic relationship, a sexual relationship, perhaps even marriage. You’re both consenting adults, you think, right? You have a right to marry, and even a right to have sex (given Lawrence v. Texas).

The Washington authorities don’t seem to think so. . . .

[T]he optician and waitress can’t date even after the two years have passed. . . .

So no dice with the patient’s sister. You can’t marry her. You can’t have sex with her. You can’t ask her on a date. You can’t even say she looks nice . . .

No matter how good your relationship with the person you’re seeing [. . .] someone else may file the complaint . . .

So much for the right to marry; so much for sexual autonomy; so much for consenting adults deciding whom to love, without the fear of losing their livelihood.

I think Volokh is partly misunderstanding the statute, and partly slanting his argument toward the most extreme of its provisions. He shows almost no concern for the problems the statute was intended to address, and launches himself on a barbarians-at-the-gates rant over fairly manageable concerns. But even if we do not blithely sweep away centuries of providers’ abuse of vulnerable patients in the face of Volokh’s anguish over the right of patients to date their dental hygienists, there are some real issues raised here.

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