The US Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit has made what the Association of American Physicians and Surgeons Educational Foundation (AAPS) calls a landmark decision in a case – AAPS v. ABIM – seeking the right to proceed with a case alleging censorship.
The case was previously dismissed by the District Court for the Southern District of Texas, but the appellate court took the position that AAPS did manage to support its claims with sufficient allegations.
We obtained a copy of the decision for you here.
AAPS, a professional association, believes that the actions of three other medical associations, and of the Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, undermined the First Amendment.
AAPS accuses the American Board of Internal Medicine (ABIM), the American Board of Family Medicine (ABFM), and the American Board of Obstetrics & Gynecology (ABOG) of coordinating to suppress AAPS members’ speech concerning Covid issues (mask mandates, lockdowns, vaccines, criticism of Anthony Fauci), and more.
This was done by the three associations named as plaintiffs threatening that AAPS-affiliated physicians would lose their board certification because of their criticism concerning medical controversies – which would have resulted in excluding them from most insurance networks and from practicing in most hospitals, the association said.
MD Jane Orient, the AAPS executive director, commented on the circuit court’s opinion to say it means the group is now able “to pursue its claim against censorship by the Biden administration.”
The district court’s ruling preventing AAPS from amending its complaint was also overturned in the appeals process.
But the Court of Appeals accepted the District Court’s opinion that the allegations concerning Mayorkas, i.e., the DHS, are “moot” – because the agency had in the meantime dissolved the Disinformation Governance Board, that AAPS claims was an actor in the “unprecedented” censorship campaign targeting its members.
In announcing the decision made by the Court of Appeals, AAPS cited one of the judges on the panel, James Ho, who stated that in the US, “We know how to disagree with one another without destroying one another. Or at least that’s how it’s supposed to work.”
The judges agreed that AAPS and similar organizations have a constitutional right to fight against censorship that affects freedom of expression at the events they organize.
AAPS believes that the decision to allow the case to proceed sets a precedent and will be “cited nationwide for decades to come.”
