Professor Shelley Saxer Quoted in "Do Psychics Need a License to Tell the Future in the Desert?" -- The Desert Sun

Professor Shelley Ross Saxer is quoted througout the Desert Sun article, "Do Psychics Need a License to Tell the Future in the Desert?" The article considers if businesses promising supernatural services are legal, and what the desert cities of Palm Springs, Cathedral City, Palm Desert, Indio, and Coachella can do to regulate psychics, mediums, and others selling knowledge of the unknowable.

Excerpt from "Do Psychics Need a License to Tell the Future in the Desert?"

The majority opinion in the 1985 state Supreme Court case that led to the psychic permitting ordinances hints at the mushy distinction between a legitimate and illegitimate psychic business. According to the opinion, if the person does not actually believe in their own ability to deliver what they promise with their occult powers, then they are engaged in fraud. The ruling reasoned, however, that if someone truly believed in the truth of their predictions, then they were acting legitimately.

"When such persons impart their beliefs to others, they are not acting fraudulently; they are communicating opinions which, however dubious, are unquestionably protected by the Constitution," wrote Justice Stanley Mosk in the 1985 opinion. 

Saxer noted that most of these thorny issues would likely only come into play if a city decided to deny a psychic a permit or deny someone a religious exemption to the permitting process.

"But I can understand cities being nervous about trying to enforce these" ordinances, she said, "because there are problems with them."

The Pepperdine law professor suggested that these issues, in part, may contribute to Coachella Valley cities' lack of enforcement of the psychic ordinances.

The complete article may be found at Desert Sun.