The letters sent by medical boards to physicians threatening to revoke their certifications contain vague language and don’t allege any specific falsehoods, a lawyer who sued the boards says.
It’s “sort of general allegations,” he added, “and then it’s a demand that the physicians prove that they’re innocent.”
Retaliation
The moves to revoke certifications are retaliation for speaking out on issues related to COVID-19, including criticism of the COVID-19 vaccines, plaintiffs say.In missives sent in May, the internal medicine board sent threatening letters to doctors “for making public statements that disagree with the approach taken by Dr. Fauci and the Biden Administration to Covid-19,” according to the suit. Dr. Anthony Fauci is the longtime head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and President Joe Biden’s chief medical adviser.
The family medicine board distributed similar missives, the suit says.
The letters have threatened to revoke the certifications that the boards bestow. They contain similar wording, according to Schlafly, and were sent out around the same time, raising concerns of collusion.
“They’re not letters that are individual, that were written from scratch for each position. Rather, there’s some sort of template that was copied and pasted from and then a dozen or two dozen letters went out almost on the same day to these physicians,” he said.
The letters are an attempt at intimidation and are having a “chilling effect,” the lawyer said, adding that they are outside of the boards’ normal practices.
The suit asks the court to declare the defendants have violated the First Amendment and to order the boards to stop threatening to revoke certifications.
