Federal court blocks COVID tyranny; Newsom's 'medical muzzle' law on hold

A federal judge has granted an injunction against enforcement of California Governor Gavin Newsom's COVID "medical misinformation" law. Dr. Simone Gold described the decision, by a Bush 43 judicial appointee, as critical to preserving the right to a second medical opinion, something the law would “essentially prohibit”. 

Targeted even before the new law

Dr. Gold has in fact been a prime target of the California Medical Board for giving a “second opinion” about COVID treatments and mRNA injections since long before the misinformation law went into effect; the first opinion being the official line of public health officials that those injections are safe and effective, that Remdesivir, but not other treatments, should be administered to COVID patients and that masks and lockdowns work. 

America's Frontline Doctors (AFLDS) even produced a short film about the attempts by the head of that Board, who is not a doctor, to muzzle Dr. Gold and others before the new law was introduced, as described in an April 2022 press release:

The episode opens with Dr. Simone Gold, AFLDS founder, physician and attorney, introducing the tragic reality: there is a war on the medical profession. Individual doctors, such as Dr. Robert Malone, Dr. Peter McCullough, Dr. Paul Marik, and Dr. Gold herself, are being targeted. Doc Tracy sets out to understand what - and who - is behind putting world-renowned doctors in their crosshairs. 
 
He's led to Kristina Lawson. Lawson is the President of the [California Medical Board]. Remarkably, she is NOT a doctor. She has no medical background whatsoever. Doc Tracy, of course, finds this troubling. . . . 
 
Doc Tracy then asks Lawson herself why she is silencing doctors. She is obviously bothered by this revelation being made public . . . exposing the machinations behind the pandemic and the draconian response by government and private actors. 
 
Dr. Gold stated, "The series is entertaining, but it's also incredibly informative. We provide an investigative treatment to a tragedy unfolding. We're sending a message to the medical establishment: we're coming for them. They're breaking the law and forcing doctors to violate their Hippocratic Oath or lose their medical license. We will not stand for it."

Muzzling doctors

The law’s definition of misinformation, as “false information that is contradicted by contemporary scientific consensus,” is a clear violation of the U.S. Constitution’s First Amendment.

Dr. Tracy Hoeg, a California physician, who brought the lawsuit against  California officials, together with four other doctors, said her 1st Amendment rights were violated by the statute's penalties for doctors providing any “information that is contradicted by contemporary scientific consensus.”

Dr. Azadeh Khatibi, another plaintiff, celebrated the win against what she labeled the, “medical muzzle law". 

1st Amendment protects only majority opinions?

Dr. Peterson Pierre, appearing on AFLDS's "Daily Dose," argued that the censorship is unconstitutional because it bans doctors from expressing anything but the majority view. Minority opinions, he explained, are the very viewpoints that are protected by the First Amendment.

Incoherent, nonsense

While the injunction against the controversial law is only valid until a full trial of the matter, Judge William Shubb's below comments about the law leave government officials with an uphill battle to prove its constitutionality.

Defendants argue that while the scientific consensus may sometimes be difficult to define, there is a clear scientific consensus on certain issues — for example, that apples contain sugar, that measles is caused by a virus, or that Down’s syndrome is caused by a chromosomal abnormality. However, [the law, known as] AB 2098 does not apply the term 'scientific consensus' to such basic facts, but rather to COVID-19 — a disease that scientists have only been studying for a few years, and about which scientific conclusions have been hotly contested. COVID-19 is a quickly evolving area of science that in many aspects eludes consensus.

Shubb added that the law's definition of what constitutes "misinformation" is "grammatically incoherent," leaving the law unconstitutionally vague. At the hearing that preceded his written decision, the judge described the definition as “nonsense”.