There is a line in California law that almost every aesthetic practice in the state is on the wrong side of, and it has nothing to do with anything complicated. It is about stock photography.
The requirement
Business & Professions Code § 651 makes it unlawful for a licensed professional to disseminate any public communication containing a false, fraudulent, misleading or deceptive statement, claim or image intended to induce the rendering of professional services.
The section then does something unusually specific for a statute. It spells out that a claim is misleading if it is likely to create false or unjustified expectations of favorable results, and it names two image problems by name:
- Any photograph or image that does not accurately depict the results of the procedure being advertised, or that has been altered in any way from the actual subject.
- Use of a photograph or image of a model without clearly stating, in a prominent location and in easily readable type, that it is a model.
Read that second one again. Not "you should probably disclose." Not buried in a footer at 9px. Prominent location, easily readable type.
If the smiling woman on your homepage is from a stock library, California requires you to say so where people can read it.
Why nearly everyone is non-compliant
Because stock imagery is the default. You buy a template, the template ships with a photo of someone who has never been to your clinic, and nobody in the chain — designer, developer, agency — is thinking about the Medical Board.
The exposure is real: a violation of § 651 is a misdemeanor, and it is grounds for Board discipline up to suspension or revocation.
What compliant looks like
Use your own patients. With written, specific, revocable consent, and with the consent covering the channels you will actually use. "We can post this" and "we can run this as a paid ad targeting your neighbors" are different permissions and should be captured as different permissions.
Label models. A visible caption. Not a tooltip, not alt text, not a hyperlink to a disclaimer page. If a reasonable person scanning the page would miss it, it is not prominent.
Don't retouch results. Any alteration to a before-and-after puts you directly inside the "altered in any manner" language. That includes the retouching your phone does automatically, which is a genuinely awkward problem and one worth solving with a fixed camera position and the editing turned off.
Watch the lighting. Two photos of the same face under different lighting can show a result that did not occur. That is not a legal gray area; it is an image that does not accurately depict the result.
The price-advertising half
The same section governs price claims. Advertised prices cannot be fraudulent, deceitful or misleading, and — the part that catches people — the price for each product or service must be clearly identifiable.
"Botox from $9/unit" with no indication of the minimum unit count, or "packages from $199" where nothing at $199 is actually obtainable, is the kind of thing the section exists to describe.
Where this collides with Meta
Meta has its own rules, and they do not line up neatly with California's.
Meta restricts before/after imagery in health and wellness ads — side-by-side comparisons for weight loss and for anti-aging treatments are prohibited outright, along with close-ups that generate negative self-perception. So the compliant California answer (use real patient results, disclosed) can be the non-compliant Meta answer (a before/after split).
The way through is usually to stop trying to show the transformation in the ad. Show the practitioner, the room, the process, the consultation. Put the results behind the click, on your own page, where California's rules apply and Meta's do not.
That is a constraint that improves the advertising, in our experience. Ads that lead with a transformation attract people shopping for a transformation; ads that lead with a practitioner attract people choosing a clinic. The second group closes better.
We audit this for every California practice we work with, and we have yet to open one where there was nothing to fix. If you want to know what yours looks like, it is a twenty-minute job and we will tell you either way.