Doctors dispute California law authorizing state medical board to revoke licenses of those challenging COVID-19 narrative
10/14/2022 / By Belle Carter
Two doctors filed a federal lawsuit to halt a recently signed California law that would enforce disciplinary actions on doctors if they “spread misinformation” or challenge the state’s Wuhan coronavirus (COVID-19) narrative.
California Assembly Bill 2098 (AB 2098), signed Sept. 30 by Governor Gavin Newsom, would authorize the Medical Board of California (MBC) to pursue professional sanctions and even license revocation against doctors who go against their COVID-19 “scientific consensus.” (Related: California legislators are on a mission to de-license ALL doctors in the state who challenge covid dogma.)
Dr. Mark McDonald, a Los Angeles psychiatrist, and Dr. Jeff Barke, an Orange County primary care physician and founding member of America’s Frontline Doctors, filed the complaint in the District Court for the Central District of California. The suit named 12 members of the MBC and California Attorney General Robert Bonta as defendants.
“[This new law] puts patients at risk. Requiring physicians to consider the state’s narrative when making a medical decision, is bad medicine and dangerous. Consensus in science only occurs when dissenting opinions are censored,” the suit stated. The plaintiffs also filed papers seeking a preliminary injunction to protect their free speech rights as the case unfolds.
Mary Holland, president and general counsel for Children’s Health Defense, commented that California’s new law is a clear violation of the First Amendment.
“It is startling that the legislature and the governor would even attempt to pass such legislation,” Holland said, adding that censoring information about health never leads to health, “but it certainly can and has led to medical catastrophes.”
According to Los Angeles Times, some doctors worry that the Golden State’s new law “could only do more harm than good.”
“What was misinformation one day is the current scientific thinking another day,” Dr. Eric Widera, professor of medicine at the University of California San Francisco, told the news portal.
Daniel Suhr, the doctors’ attorney and managing lawyer at the national nonprofit law firm Liberty Justice Center, said: “We rely on our doctors to give us their best medical advice, yet the State of California is stopping doctors from doing just that. That’s not just wrong, it’s unconstitutional.”
AB 2098 defines “misinformation” as “false information that is contradicted by contemporary scientific consensus contrary to the standard of care” and “disinformation” as “misinformation that the licensee deliberately disseminated with malicious intent or an intent to mislead.”
The lawsuit disputed this in the context of a new disease like COVID-19, about which consensus opinions and official guidance are regularly adjusted as new information is learned.
“Reasonable minds disagreed then, and continue to disagree now, about any number of such topics, but the search for truth cannot be furthered by a government edict imposing orthodoxy from above, punishing those who disagree with the loss of their profession and their livelihood,” the lawsuit stated.
It also alleged that the new law “intrudes into the privacy of the doctor-patient relationship” by “replacing the medical judgment of the government for that of the licensed professional and chilling the speech of those who dissent from the official view.”
New California law may cause doctors to censor themselves
The said bill was introduced in mid-February by California Assemblymember Evan Low, one of the Democratic state lawmakers who established the Vaccine Work Group in January that would develop laws promoting the use of COVID-19 vaccines while “battling misinformation.”
Back in June, a hearing was held in the Senate Business, Professions and Economic Development Committee, where Low declared that his bill was “really very straightforward.”
According to civil rights attorney Laura Powell, Low had struggled to respond to questions from the committee and had often resorted to simply reading the text of the bill during the hearing that lasted for over an hour.
Powell also noted that there was no clear guidance regarding what would constitute “misinformation,” and physicians can only guess if they risk losing their licenses for expressing their good-faith disagreements with positions of public health officials.
“Even if in practice, the Medical Board only applied the law to speech that the First Amendment does not protect, the law’s vagueness would render it unconstitutional, because it would tend to cause doctors to censor themselves,” she pointed out.
Visit MedicalCensorship.com for more stories like this.
Watch Steve Bannon and Dr. Robert Malone discuss why AB 2098 violates the Nuremberg Code and the right to informed consent.
This video is from the In Search Of Truth channel on Brighteon.com.
More related stories:
The dystopian vision of the health information police.
California warns doctors: tell the truth about anything and you’ll lose your medical license.
California doctor pushes back against “medical misinformation bill.”
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