Children’s Health Defense (CHD) earlier this week sued the Medical Board of California for continuing to threaten doctors with disciplinary action related to their stance on Covid, which the board treats as “misinformation.”
The filing before the US District Court for the Eastern District of California explains that this is happening despite the fact that a law the board used to justify such actions is no longer enforced.
We obtained a copy of the lawsuit for you here.
Passed in 2022 and in the meantime repealed, the legislation, AB 2098, sought to accuse doctors – considered to be giving patients “false” Covid information – of unprofessional conduct.
But AB 2098 ceased to be in effect on January 1, thanks to a clause in California Senate Bill SB 815.
However, that doesn’t seem to have deterred the Medical Board from continuing to pursue its policy of intimidation based on the now repealed law, the filing alleges.
Something obviously had to be done to handle the formal side of the newly-created legal situation – so now the board is investigating physicians and threatening disciplinary measures by accusing them of breaking “the general standard of care statute.”
CHD sees AB 2098 as a way the authorities in California tried to meddle in the doctor-patient relationship. But also, it was a way to “manipulate what doctors can share with their patients, punishing doctors who ‘stray’ from the government’s narrative,” as CHD Senior Counsel Kim Mack Rosenberg put it.
And Rosenberg considers the lawsuit her organization filed on Tuesday to have fundamental importance since the end of the law did not spell the end of the state engaging in “overreach and intrusion on doctor-patient relationships.”
One of CHD’s lawyers involved in the lawsuit, Richard Jaffe, told the press that last year, faced with pressure from the board and accused of spreading “misinformation” about Covid vaccines, one doctor lost her license – by agreeing to surrender it.
One of the plaintiffs named in the filing, board-certified family practitioner Dr. Brian Tyson, said the lawsuit was a welcome development and a way to ensure “medical freedom” – i.e., doctors being able to talk with their patients about important issues without fear of persecution.
“It is important to be able to give patients full informed consent on everything we do – what are the true risks and benefits of vaccines, medicines and other treatment options,” said Tyson.
A key request that the plaintiffs put before the court is to declare that medical boards “do not have the First Amendment constitutional authority to investigate, prosecute or sanction physicians for providing such recommendations about COVID vaccines/boosters, or on or off-label FDA approved treatments for COVID, or for any other COVID-related subject.”
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