In a landmark case, an appellate court judge has ruled that physicians threatened by credentialing boards for speaking out against Covid policies and abortion have sufficient standing in court.
A year after the case was dismissed by a district court, the Association of American Physicians and Surgeons (AAPS) Educational Foundation filed an appeal for the right to sue the American Board of Internal Medicine, the American Board of Obstetrics and Gynecology, the American Board of Family Medicine, and the secretary of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security for “coordinated” attempts to “censor and chill the speech of physicians,” especially those “who spoke critically of positions taken by Dr. Anthony Fauci, lockdowns, mask mandates, Covid vaccination, and abortion.”
A district court judge had ruled AAPS lacked standing and denied AAPS’s attempt to amend the claim. But in a decision filed June 3, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit reversed the dismissal, and the case has now been remanded to a lower court for discovery and potentially a full trial.
“The AAPS Educational Foundation brought the case because of a series of physicians who were being threatened with loss of their board certification because they had made comments that were either critical of the Covid vaccines or that advocated for early treatment with repurposed drugs,” Jane Orient, AAPS executive director, told me. “Particularly bad were the three defendants of the internal board who were also engaged in threatening physicians who supported the overturning of Roe v. Wade or had anything to say about abortion and its side effects.”
The claimants also identified unlawful actions taken by Homeland Security’s Disinformation........