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

===  
 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-misinformatio...
104. 
https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/bill...
AB2098
105. 
https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/bill...
version=20210AB209894CHP
106. 
https://www.theepochtimes.com/judge-blocks-ca...
law_5011771.html
107. https://rickjaffeesq.com/wp-content/uploads/2...
108. 
https://rickjaffeesq.com/2023/01/26/we-won-ab...
pped/
109. 
https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/bill...
AB2098
110. 
https://www.theepochtimes.com/newsom-signs-bi...
to-face-discipline-for-misinformation_4766970.html
111. 
https://www.kusi.com/federal-judge-calls-defi...
-in-ab-2098/
112. 
https://www.theepochtimes.com/california-doct...
ip-bill_4295036.html
113. 
https://rickjaffeesq.com/wp-content/uploads/2...
pdf
114. 
https://www.theepochtimes.com/california-lawm...
ng-doctors-for-misinformation_4704593.html
115. https://rickjaffeesq.com/wp-content/uploads/2...
116. https://rickjaffeesq.com/wp-content/uploads/2...
===

- Sean

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