A lawsuit is underway against California medical boards’ “misinformation powers,” focused on a law that is to be repealed.
The rule, Assembly Bill 2098, defined “unprofessional conduct” for medical professionals.”
The bill designated the “dissemination of misinformation or disinformation related to the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus, or ‘COVID-19,’ as unprofessional conduct.”
Although the bill will be repealed before the start of 2024, “The Medical Board of California will continue to maintain the authority to hold medical licensees accountable for deviating from the standard of care and misinforming their patients about COVID-19 treatments,” Democrat member of California Assembly Evan Low said.
“Because of the repeal of AB 2098, and the board’s position that it can still sanction the speech targeted by the soon-to-be-repealed law, we are pivoting in our lawsuit and arguing to the judge that they can’t do it under their general statute either because the speech does not change just because the legal theory/statute changes,” explained California attorney Richard Jaffe.
Jaffe represents the plaintiffs in the upcoming case Hoang et al. v. Bonta et al. Arguments will begin on November 13.
“[T]he professional speech exception doctrine was specifically rejected by the Supreme Court because the doctrine plainly violates Nat’l Inst. Advocates & Life Advocates v. Becerra …where the Supreme Court rejected the notion that professional speech is treated differently from other speech (except in two circumstances not applicable to this kind of speech),” Jaffe wrote in the case.
He added, “[D]espite the imminent repeal of the specific covid misinformation law, the Boards are continuing to intimidate physicians and chill their speech by boasting in the media that AB 2098’s repeal means nothing; that it is business as usual in the intimidation, investigation, and prosecution of physicians for the same things the Boards will no longer be able to do under the soon to be repealed law.”
