California Physicians Free Speech Win

AB 2098 Injunction Upheld

Assembly Bill 2098, California’s medical misinformation law, has suffered its first legal defeat.

A judge in California agreed with a request for preliminary injunction to protect five California physicians from the Medical Board of California. AB 2098 empowers the Medical Board of California (MBC) to suspend the medical licenses of any physician whose speech does not conform to the political views of those in power. Specifically, if a doctor tells a patient that wearing a mask does not prevent infection from a respiratory virus, or that the experimental mRNA injections can be harmful (in addition to being ineffective), he may be prevented from practicing medicine in the state of California. This law is both unconstitutional and destructive—it effectively ends the possibility of pursuing an honest doctor-patient relationship and will force the best doctors to flee to other states, or simply retire from the profession. The preliminary injunction blocks the MBC from using AB 2098 to sanction the five doctors in the case. It does not, however, extend this protection to any other physicians.

Last year, I filed a lawsuit against AB 2098 with the assistance of Liberty Justice Center. The preliminary injunction is not the product of our lawsuit but rather one filed by a group of physicians lead by psychiatrist and former UCI professor Aaron Kheriaty, MD. Dr. Kheriaty has been personally harmed by the larger anti truth in medicine movement. He chaired the bio-medical ethics committee at the UCI medical school until being forced to resign two years ago after raising questions about the ethics of requiring both adults and children be injected with the experimental mRNA product. He can no longer work at UCI and soon may no longer be able to work at all in the state, if AB 2098 is not rescinded.

I remain under investigation by the MBC for “spreading medical misinformation” through posts from 2020 on my social media pages regarding masks and ivermectin. Perhaps this recent win will slow down the attacks on me and others not party to Dr. Kheriaty’s lawsuit. Additional lawsuits have been filed against AB 2098, including one out of San Diego. That lawsuit is on appeal now and has been consolidated with our lawsuit. That means that, ultimately, the outcome of this battle will be determined in federal appeals court. It may even be decided by the US Supreme Court.

The protection of free speech extends far beyond the free speech of physicians in California. Professional speech is under attack across multiple professions. State bar associations have begun censoring and sanctioning attorneys for challenging left-wing political orthodoxy. Unless this attack on the free speech of California physicians is halted now, Americans across the nation will soon be at risk of losing their employment because they dare to point out obvious reality: Masks don’t work. Healthy children are dying from harmful experimental injections. Men cannot become women. Renewable energy produces more pollution than fossil fuels. Once truth becomes outlawed, freedom dies.

The war for our freedom comes in the form of many smaller battles. The battle to end AB 2098 is one of those battles, an important one that we should all be paying attention to.

Mark McDonald, M.D.
Psychiatrist and author of United States of Fear: How America Fell Victim to a Mass Delusional Psychosis and Freedom From Fear: A 12 Step Guide to Personal and National Recovery