The U.S. Supreme Court on Jan. 13 rejected an emergency application to block the Washington Medical Commission from investigating licensed physicians in the state over their criticism of COVID-19 policies.
The Washington state commission considers the doctors’ dissenting views on the disease to be potentially dangerous misinformation that should be suppressed. The physicians counter that just because they have medical licenses they don’t surrender their free speech rights under the First Amendment.
Supreme Court rules allow an application that has been denied by one justice to be presented to another justice. Neither Thomas nor Kagan explained their respective decisions.
The application was brought by former professional basketball player John Stockton along with Drs. Richard Eggleston, Thomas Siler, Daniel Moynihan, another 50 unidentified medical doctors, and the 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.
The lawsuit remains pending in the Ninth Circuit.
The application says that it concerns the state’s program that targets “Washington-licensed physicians for expressing public views on COVID-19 that diverge from prevailing orthodoxy.”
The state deems the doctors’ viewpoint “misinformation” and argues that it may “regulate this speech,” which is something the Supreme Court ruled in National Institute of Family and Life Advocates v. Becerra (2018) that it cannot do, according to the application.
In September 2021, relying on its authority under Washington state’s Uniform Disciplinary Act, the Washington Medical Commission began enforcing a policy against doctors “for public speech critical of COVID-19 policies,” which has resulted in “disciplinary actions against at least ten healthcare practitioners,” it stated.
“As we battle COVID-19, with so many tools at our disposal to protect ourselves and others, it is viral misinformation, rooted in unfounded scientific claims, that often stands in our way.”
The commission is prosecuting Eggleston and Siler for opinion articles that they wrote in The Lewiston Tribune and American Thinker, respectively, that criticized COVID-19 policies.
The applicant Children’s Health Defense, which has a Washington state medical doctor as a member, joined the application because “[the nonprofit group] is actively involved in advocacy and protecting freedom of speech and Covid vaccine related issues and educates the public on these issues,” the application stated.
The doctors’ other co-counsel, Richard Jaffe of Sacramento, California, told The Epoch Times that the case is far from over.
The Supreme Court’s new ruling means the case will continue before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, where oral argument has been scheduled for the week of May 12, he said.
“It was a long shot to ask the justices to take over a case during the pendency of an appeal, but we thought it was worth the effort because the basic idea that the state can sanction a physician for speaking out in public about a matter of public interest seems so un-American and at odds with every judge and justice who have written about this issue,” Jaffe said.
“We will continue to remind the courts and those who currently control the medical narrative that in the shifting winds of time, science, and politics, what is reviled and ridiculed may become accepted, and that which had been accepted may become disfavored.”
In Kory v. Bonta, three doctors are asking the Supreme Court to prevent the California Medical Board from investigating them over their opposition to state-approved COVID-19 policies.
The Epoch Times contacted the respondent in Stockton v. Ferguson, Washington state Attorney General Bob Ferguson, for comment, and no reply was received by publication time.
