From: https://tinyurl.com/2p8rdwu5

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California's COVID-19 Gag Law Is `First Effort to Suppress' Doctors: Lawyer

'If they get away with this, it's not going to be the last time they do
this'
Mimi Nguyen Ly
January 26, 2023

California's controversial [102]COVID-19 [103]misinformation law, which
bars doctors from providing "misinformation" or "disinformation" related
to COVID-19, is an unprecedented effort by those in power to block doctors
from sharing their views on COVID-19 topics, including on vaccines, with
their patients, an attorney says. And lawmakers had pivoted the initial
bill from its true, intended purpose to be able to pass it.

That's according to Rick Jaffe, an attorney who represents a lawsuit
challenging the measure, [104]AB 2098 ([105]pdf), also referred to
colloquially as the state's COVID-19 misinformation law, which became
effective on Jan. 1 but has since been put on hold.

A judge [106]granted a preliminary injunction ([107]pdf) late
Wednesday, temporarily blocking the law from being enforced pending
further litigation in two lawsuits. Jaffe is involved in one of the
cases-Hoang v. Bonta. The other case is Hoeg v. Newsom. Both had argued,
in part, that AB 2098 is unconstitutional under the First and Fourteenth
Amendments of the U.S. Constitution.

"This is the first effort to suppress health care practitioners from
telling patients what the doctors think," Jaffe said of the COVID-19
misinformation law in a recent interview with EpochTV's "Crossroads"
program.

"If they get away with this, it's not going to be the last time they do
this ... That's what we're battling against," he added, noting that such
impunity could result in similar speech-suppression efforts "for the next
pandemic."

From Jan. 1 until the latest injunction, AB 2098 meant that doctors were
able to "be sanctioned for speaking out against the mainstream COVID
media," Jaffe said.

He celebrated the latest ruling late Wednesday in a [108]blog post. "We
won!" he wrote.

"[Senior Judge William B. Shubb] granted our motion ... for a preliminary
injunction stopping the Attorney General and the [California] medical
boards from enforcing its Covid Misinformation bill," he said.

"Today was a very, very good day for physicians' free speech and health
freedom. But tomorrow, we start working on the next battle. No rest for
the committed," he said of the ongoing lawsuit.

[109]The legislation, as signed into law by Gov. Gavin Newsom on Sept. 30,
2022, [110]stipulates that the Medical Board of California and
the Osteopathic Medical Board of California can discipline doctors who
provide "misinformation" or "disinformation" related to COVID-19.

It 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."

But the broad definition of what constitutes misinformation has been put
under scrutiny. In the hearing on Jan. 24, Shubb called the law's
definition of misinformation "nonsense," and said the overall law lacked
clarity, reported [111]KUSI.

Lawmakers Pivoted Legislation to Pass it

The original purpose of AB 2098, [112]first proposed in February 2022, was
to penalize California doctors who were questioning the COVID-19 vaccines,
or promoting the use of ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine in the media and
social media, or any other comments not in line with the "consensus."

This was what Jaffe and attorneys for Children's Health Defense (CHD) said
in the motion ([113]pdf) that sought the now-granted preliminary
injunction.

"And then what happened is, it became very clear very quickly to the
legislature is that you can't stop doctors from speaking out in public,"
Jaffe said.

"There's no serious person who knows the Constitution is going to say that
a medical board can sanction a physician for expressing his views in
public. ... In other words, that's an automatic violation of the First
Amendment."

In order to save the bill, its authors "agreed to gut the bill and abandon
the bill's basic purpose," the motion stated.

The lawmakers tried to limit the legislation's scope to only "information
provided for the purposes of treatment or advice between a doctor and a
patient, in the hopes that that would basically avoid the obvious
constitutional problem," Jaffe told Crossroads.

Notably, when lawmakers [114]passed the measure in September 2022, its
text only targets doctors' speech in their non-public interactions with
their patients when discussing topics directly related to COVID-19
treatment.

"It was really the public problem they were trying to address, but they
had to give that up," Jaffe said. "The way the law reads now is, it's
completely ineffective to do what the law was supposed to do, which was to
stop these doctors from drowning out the public health authorities."

The judge, in ruling to temporarily halt the bill, had "extensively" cited
an expert declaration ([115]pdf) submitted by Dr. Sanjay Verma, which had
"demonstrated that there is no scientific consensus in Covid-19," Jaffe
said on his blog.

Shubb, in this ruling ([116]pdf), noted that COVID-19 is "a disease that
scientists have only been studying for a few years, and about which
scientific conclusions have been hotly contested," adding, "COVID-19 is a
quickly evolving area of science that in many aspects eludes consensus."

The state medical board actually "don't even need" the law, and if they
wanted to, without AB 2098, they could still try to sanction doctors both
for their public and private speech, Jaffe told Crossroads. "But they
figured, `well, let's make it clear that we can do it.' That's their
position," he said in commenting on why the legislation may have been
proposed in the first place.

Links:
102. https://www.theepochtimes.com/t-covid-19
103. https://www.theepochtimes.com/t-misinformation
104. https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billTextClient.xhtml?bill_id=202120220 AB2098
105. https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billPdf.xhtml?bill_id=202120220AB2098& version=20210AB209894CHP
106. https://www.theepochtimes.com/judge-blocks-californias-covid-19-misinformation- law_5011771.html
107. https://rickjaffeesq.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/01/injunctiongranted.pdf 108. https://rickjaffeesq.com/2023/01/26/we-won-ab-2098-bp-section-2270-has-been-sto pped/
109. https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billTextClient.xhtml?bill_id=202120220 AB2098
110. https://www.theepochtimes.com/newsom-signs-bill-allowing-doctors-in-california- to-face-discipline-for-misinformation_4766970.html
111. https://www.kusi.com/federal-judge-calls-definitions-of-misinformation-nonsense -in-ab-2098/
112. https://www.theepochtimes.com/california-doctors-warn-against-covid-19-censorsh ip-bill_4295036.html
113. https://rickjaffeesq.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/01/Hoang-Final-Repyfilingcopy. pdf
114. https://www.theepochtimes.com/california-lawmakers-pass-bill-to-punish-dissenti ng-doctors-for-misinformation_4704593.html
115. https://rickjaffeesq.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/12/sanjaydeclaration.pdf 116. https://rickjaffeesq.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/01/injunctiongranted.pdf ===

- Sean

... If I'm right 90% of the time, why quibble about the remaining 3%?
--- MMail/FreeBSD
* Origin: Outpost BBS * Johnson City, TN (618:618/1)