The physicians say California cannot take away their free speech rights on public health grounds.
Three doctors are asking the U.S. Supreme Court to prevent a California agency from investigating them over their opposition to state-approved COVID-19 policies.
The California Medical Board considers the expression of the doctors’ dissenting views on the disease as potentially dangerous misinformation that should be suppressed. The board argues it has legal authority to discipline the doctors for speech it deems to be medical misconduct. The physicians counter that just because they have medical licenses doesn’t mean they forfeit their free speech rights under the First Amendment.
The emergency application in Kory v. Bonta was docketed by the high court on Jan. 8, one of the applicants’ attorneys, Richard Jaffe of Sacramento, California, told The Epoch Times.
The application for an injunction was submitted to Supreme Court Justice Elena Kagan, who oversees urgent appeals from California.
It is unclear when the Supreme Court will act on the application.
The justices could grant an injunction against the state, deny the injunction, or schedule the case for oral argument.
The application was brought by medical doctors Pierre Kory and Brian Tyson, osteopathic physician Le Trinh Hoag, Physicians for Informed Consent, and Children’s Health Defense, a nonprofit founded by Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
President-elect Donald Trump, who will be inaugurated on Jan. 20, has nominated Kennedy to be secretary of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. Kennedy, an attorney, is also listed as co-counsel on the application.
California’s executive and legislative branches are “threatening California physicians with professional discipline for their viewpoint speech contrary to the mainstream COVID narrative,” according to the application.
After the Federation of State Medical Boards in July 2021 encouraged its member medical boards in the United States to punish physicians for advancing perceived “COVID misinformation” and “disinformation” among patients and the public, California Medical Board President Kristina Lawson announced in February 2022 that the board planned to sanction physicians for what it called “COVID misinformation.”
The California Legislature passed AB 2098, which took effect in January 2023, making the dissemination of “misinformation” about the disease an offense for which doctors could be disciplined, the application said.
