Law allows medical boards to punish physicians over medical “misinformation.“
QUICK FACTS:
- Five doctors are suing the state of California over a new law that allows medical boards to discipline doctors offering certain COVID-19 information.
- The law allows for the punishment of doctors who offer what is deemed to be “misinformation or disinformation” regarding coronavirus.
- Dr. Tracy Høeg, a California physician, and the four other doctors involved in the case have asserted that the law’s definition of misinformation as “false information that is contradicted by contemporary scientific consensus,” violates the First Amendment.
- California Gov. Gavin Newsom signed the bill into law shortly after it was passed in September of this year.
- Doctors assert that the law violates their constitutional rights of free speech and due process.
- Defendants include Newsom and members of the California Medical Board.
CASE DETAILS:
- The doctors have taken exception to the term “scientific consensus,” saying it is unconstitutionally vague and therefore violates the plaintiffs’ rights to due process.
- They are being represented by the New Civil Liberties Alliance and attorney Jenin Younes who filed the suit in a U.S. court in eastern California where they have asked the court to enter a preliminary injunction against the law, blocking the enforcement until the case is resolved.
- “We have no doubt that courts will see this unconstitutional law for what it is and strike it down,” Younes said in a statement about the doctors’ case.
- In their suit, the doctors asserted that “In safeguarding Americans’ rights to free speech and expression, the First Amendment applies not only to expression of majority opinions, but to minority views as well. Indeed, it is minority views that need protection from government censorship—as this law shows. Nor is there an exception to the prohibition on viewpoint-based discrimination simply because the law applies only to a regulated profession. In short, AB 2098 infringes Plaintiffs’ First Amendment rights because it impedes their ability to communicate with their patients in the course of treatment.”
BACKGROUND:
- Newsom has come under fire for a law that could screen out believers from California police forces.
- The laws being put into place in California have pushed police departments to look through applicants’ social media profiles for what they called, “disqualifying bias,” such as calling transgender-identifying individuals by the wrong pronouns.
- Hannah E. Meyers, director of policing and public safety at the Manhattan Institute, told journalists, “It is supremely important to recruit and hire officers with good judgment, maturity, and a commitment to treat all citizens with respect and without bigotry.” “Otherwise, the state will end up with only low-quality candidates and officers who may execute the job in ways that endanger all citizens. And it will be vulnerable minorities who bear an ever more skewed cost as public safety crumbles,” Meyers added.
