Three doctors have filed an application to the Supreme Court to block the California Medical Board from investigating them for their views on COVID-19 policies.
“California’s combined executive and legislative branch campaign threatening California physicians with professional discipline for their viewpoint speech contrary to the mainstream Covid narrative was precipitated by a short press release issued by the Federation of State Medical Boards (the ‘Federation’) on July 29, 2021,” the application states.
The application specifically challenges the “practice and policy of threatening and targeting physicians with discipline for providing information and recommendations contrary to the mainstream Covid narrative.”
The filing is “principally about information and the Respondents’ constitutional lack of authority to sanction physicians for the information provided to patients based on their characterizing speech as Covid misinformation in violation of the standard of care,” the application states.
A similar application was filed by Washington doctors last year.
The filing pertained to a program “which investigates and sanctions Washington-licensed physicians for expressing public views on COVID-19 that diverge from prevailing orthodoxy,” it read. “They justify the program by calling the viewpoint, public speech ‘misinformation,’ and assert their authority to regulate this speech by recharacterizing it as conduct or incidental to conduct.”
“Court should speak clearly and decisively to state actors, professional organizations, other non-state actors, and the national media: Public speech does not lose its constitutional protection from government action simply because it is uttered by a healthcare professional, even if it is at odds with medical orthodoxy,” the application said.
