Appeals Court Allows Doctors to Continue First Amendment Lawsuit Against Gov’t for Censorship of Dissenting COVID, Abortion Views
The doctors alleged a conspiracy between the Biden administration and medical certification boards to censor physicians.
Doctors with dissenting views on COVID-19 and abortion can proceed with their First Amendment lawsuit, a federal appeals court ruled on June 3.
The Association of American Physicians and Surgeons (AAPS) sued on the doctors’ behalf and argued that “medical specialty certifiers” and the government conspired to punish the doctors for their views.
A lower court dismissed the AAPS lawsuit on standing grounds and with prejudice, meaning the AAPS could not refile. The appeals court modified the dismissal to “without prejudice,” allowing the AAPS to refile.
The doctors represented by the AAPS “spoke critically of positions taken by Dr. Anthony Fauci, lockdowns, mask mandates, Covid vaccination, and abortion,” resulting in an alleged “coordinated [effort] to censor and chill” their speech.
The medical certifiers “expressly threatened to strip certification from otherwise qualified physicians who express[ed] such views.”
Because “[b]oard certifications constitute a de facto essential credential for physicians to practice,” the medical certifiers “exercise great power over physicians’ speech,” the appellate opinion notes.
One medical certifier, for example, exercised that power by “sending letters to all certified physicians threatening to strip them of their invaluable certification” on July 7, 2022.
The letter warned doctors that eligibility to maintain certification would depend on the medical certifier’s “review [of] reports of dissemination of misinformation and disinformation about COVID-19, reproductive health care, contraception, [and] abortion.”
“The letters . . . were,” the AAPS alleges, “sent nearly simultaneously and with similar terminology as ‘part of a broader campaign by the Biden Administration to advance its particular partisan agenda concerning Covid-19 and abortion.'”
For its part, the government issued a May 2, 2022, press release calling for “‘recommendations for how the Department [of Homeland Security] can most effectively and appropriately address [COVID] disinformation that poses a threat to the homeland.”
The release cautioned that any action must respect “free speech and other fundamental rights.”
Despite its call to protect “fundamental rights,” the press release “prompted a massive backlash,” with state attorneys general swiftly criticizing the directive on free speech grounds in a letter sent on May 5, 2022.
The backlash caused the department to “pause” the directive and abandon it on August 24, 2022.
Named defendants include the Department of Homeland Security and certifiers like the American Board of Internal Medicine, the American Board of Obstetrics & Gynecology, and the American Board of Family Medicine.
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Comments
yeah those after the fact lawsuits never stop the initial carnage
and how much if any is paid out will come from the taxpayers?
when we hold our version of the “nuremberg trials”
think of alll that could have been saved/prevented if the gop did their job in the first place
How is it the GOP’s fault? Detsils, please.
the gop has not assisted in signing into law many pro welfare state laws/regs
but when having the golden opp during the DemVid19 shutdown of america in 2020
to enact laws especially at the state levels of not paying non working teachers etc
THEY DIDNT DO SH ABOUT IT!!!!
THEY didnt even stop Ovomit care when they had the chance
or go back to the 1930’s when they didnt stop the fdr onslaught
we know the left hates america
but for the gop to not stop the flow of tax money to the msm etc!!!??
correction:
the gop HAS ASSISTED in signing into law many pro welfare
Dr. Fauci is being told by his lackeys that he continues to get thousands of fan letters a day. At the start of last week’s hearings he could be heard to mutter, “All right, Mr. DeMille, I’m ready for my close-up.”
Dr. Fauci got his biggest fan letter from Donald Trump when Trump awarded him with a Presidential Commendation for his work in fighting Covid. Trump is his #1 biggest, HUUUUUGE fan.
Obnoxious/fascistic tranny misogyny and abuse/mutilation/exploitation/manipulation of vulnerable children and teens;
Open borders lunacy and Dhimmi-crat DA’s perennial coddling of illegal aliens and citizen-criminals;
Constant, dishonest and corrosive racial agitprop and antics;
Gleeful rationalizing, enabling and lionizing of Jew-hating, genocidal Islamofascists and Muslim supremacists;
Enabling infanticide on-demand;
A feckless, cowed and emasculated foreign policy of total incompetence, enabling the world’s most malignant and belligerent totalitarian regimes;
The promotion of and implementation of manifestly idiotic, profligate, prosperity-destroying and national security-destroying “green” energy conceits and policies;
The abuse of federal and local law enforcement to intimidate, cow and prosecute conservative Americans who reject and oppose the vile Dhimmi-crats’ destructive, anti-U.S. agenda.
How many more reasons does one need to not vote Dhimmi-crat?
It’s not just doctors. The government is in the online censorship business to this very day.
One horrible decision one good decision today.
Anyone who thinks the senate doesn’t matter is an idiot.
True. The control of the Senate is important. Even better would be a Senate majority comprised of folks faithful to the Constitution and to the policy agenda their constituents voted for. Going on offense instead of staying on defense is imperative. The whole ‘let’s be slightly less X than the d/prog by proposing X lite legislation’ is IMO a speed bump as best and a deliberately engineered managed decline at worst. I
IOW attempting to block a Cray Cray nominee or slowing down the passage of Cray Cray legislation is a start. What would impress me though is use of a speaking filibuster to maintain control of the floor indefinitely. 48 Senators is plenty to devise a shift schedule with a back-up on hand to facilitate it. Hold the floor and refuse to yield until they get enough of what they came to DC to do, or at least said they did while campaigning. No more Kabuki.
Precisely. And the only reason the Democrats control the Senate is because of Trump’s disastrous interference in the Georgia Senate elections when he told Republicans not to even bother to vote, because the election was rigged.
If DHS abandoned its directive a couple of years ago, doesn’t that exempt them from being sued — because the issue is moot?