Medical staff treat a coronavirus disease (COVID-19) patient at the Providence Mission Hospital in Mission Viejo, Calif., Jan. 25, 2022.
Photo:
SHANNON STAPLETON/REUTERS
Gov.
Gavin Newsom
boasts that California is the land of the free, yet courts keep rebuking state lawmakers for violating individual liberties. A federal judge did so again last week in enjoining a new state law that threatened to punish doctors accused of promulgating Covid “misinformation.”
Democrats last year passed legislation empowering the state medical board to discipline doctors licensed in the state who “disseminate misinformation or disinformation” that contradicts the “contemporary scientific consensus” or is “contrary to the standard of care.” The law’s goal is to enforce a public-health orthodoxy among doctors and silence dissenters.
But as federal Judge
William Shubb
explains, the law’s definitions of “misinformation” and “contemporary scientific consensus” are unconstitutionally vague under the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. Doctors have no way of knowing how the law will be applied by the board or interpreted by courts, which chills their practice of medicine.
“Who determines whether a consensus exists to begin with? If a consensus does exist, among whom must the consensus exist (for example practicing physicians, or professional organizations, or medical researchers, or public health officials, or perhaps a combination)?” Judge Shubb wrote. He also asked what sources doctors should consult to determine the consensus.
The state argued that while scientific consensus can sometimes be difficult to define, there is clear consensus on certain issues such as that apples contain sugar, measles is caused by a virus, and Down syndrome is caused by a chromosomal abnormality.
True, but that isn’t what the state’s medical enforcers really have in mind. Under the law, doctors could be…
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