A little over a year ago, the California state legislature passed a highly controversial law which was signed by Governor Gavin Newsom. Supposedly intended to promote “public safety,” the bill made it illegal for doctors to “share unapproved COVID information” with patients. Those found to be in violation of the law were in danger of having their license to practice medicine suspended. The many obvious problems with enacting such a law, not to mention enforcing it, were ignored in the interest of expediency and shutting down any public or professional objections to The Narrative. Well, that didn’t last long at all. The law was immediately challenged and shot down in the courts. Yesterday, Newsom signed a new bill repealing the laws and it seems as if all involved are going to try to pretend that the entire unpleasant event never took place. But that doesn’t mean that the liberal COVID hysteria contingent will be happy about it. (National Review)

California governor Gavin Newsom on Monday signed a bill repealing a law prohibiting physicians from sharing information with their patients that contradicts the prevailing scientific sentiment on Covid-19.

The initial law, which Newsom signed in September 2022, violated doctors’ First Amendment rights to free speech and Fourteenth Amendment rights to due process of law, critics say. The text of the bill includes a clause explaining that “physicians who engage in the dissemination of COVID-19 vaccine misinformation or disinformation risk losing their medical license.”

Indeed, under the terms of that law, California’s Medical Board — which is not solely composed of doctors — was authorized to punish physicians who share unauthorized information with their patients. The bill classified such material as “false information that is contradicted by contemporary scientific consensus contrary to the standard of care.”

The original law was signed in September of last year and it was immediately challenged by The New Civil Liberties Alliance. In barely three months the courts granted a preliminary injunction blocking the law and they were working toward a summary judgment when the law was repealed. There does not seem to be a record of any doctor having been prosecuted under the law successfully, so the entire episode appears to have been a waste of time.

The NCLA focused on the First Amendment rights of doctors as a route to having the law struck down, and that was probably a valid argument, but it clearly doesn’t tell the whole story. Even if it were constitutional to limit the speech of doctors when they are speaking to patients, who would be the final arbiter of what medical advice does or does not “contradict the prevailing scientific sentiment” on COVID or any other medical condition? Nearly every medical treatment plan has more than one option and there are different schools of thought about each within the medical community.

That was especially true when it came to COVID in general and the new mRNA vaccines in particular. The state was prepared to enforce laws based on the “prevailing scientific sentiment” when that “sentiment” was not only far from unanimous but turned out to be almost entirely wrong. California would have been suspending the licenses of doctors who told their patients that the vaccines might not be the best choice for younger, healthier people and probably wouldn’t prevent them from catching or spreading the disease. And yet those doctors would prove to be absolutely correct. It’s just insanity.

This situation does, however, highlight ongoing questions about the medical community itself, which largely operates like the Wild West, free of government intrusion in all but the most egregious cases of abuse or fraudulent qualifications. There is at least a valid debate about various COVID treatments, but we can find much worse examples across the field. Look no further than all of the doctors who have taken a head-first dive into various transgender “treatments” for minors despite there being no scientific evidence to support the efficacy of these treatments and little discussion of the harm that they cause. A law banning such treatments and advice would probably also fail under the First Amendment, but at least you would be making the attempt for a good cause.

There was a time when Newsom would have gone to the wall to defend a bill like this, despite anything that the courts or the First Amendment might have to say about it. The progressive left wanted to Blame The Unvaccinated and force everyone to take the jabs, and Newsom would traditionally lead the charge to please them. But now he’s acting as if he’s almost… reasonable. Or is that just my imagination? These days it’s hard to look at anything Given Newsom does without somehow framing it in the light of his obvious presidential ambitions.