Posted on 07/03/2012 6:15:01 AM PDT by marktwain
Tallahassee —
A federal judge has permanently blocked a Florida law barring doctors from asking their patients about gun ownership, ruling the law unconstitutionally violates physicians’ freedom of speech.
U.S. District Judge Marcia Cooke issued a permanent injunction Friday that barred the law from going into effect and rejected the state’s argument that the law was aimed at protecting gun owners from discrimination. Cooke had temporarily put the law on hold last year, after three groups of doctors sued Gov. Rick Scott within days after he signed the National Rifle Association-backed bill passed by the GOP-dominated legislature.
“This law chills practitioners’ speech in a way that impairs the provision of medical care and may ultimately harm the patient,” Cooke wrote in her 25-page ruling. “The State, through this law, inserts itself in the doctor-patient relationship, prohibiting and burdening speech necessary to the proper practice of preventive medicine, thereby preventing patients from receiving truthful, non-misleading information…. This it cannot do.”
Scott’s spokesman Lane Wright said the governor was considering his options.
Rep. Jason Brodeur, a Sanford Republican who sponsored the bill, and the Florida Senate’s general counsel, Craig Meyer, said they believed Scott would appeal.
Mobeen Rathore, president of the Florida Chapter of the American Academy of Pediatrics, said he hoped the case would be quickly resolved, for patients’ sake, “so we can continue our efforts to get them the best information, specifically preventive information to families for their children on this and all risk issues.”
The NRA and some gun owners complained that doctors were using questions about guns to discourage gun ownership. They cited the example of an Ocala pediatrician who told a couple to find a new doctor because the couple refused to answer questions about whether they owned guns and how they were stored.
But the judge chided the legislature for relying upon anecdotal evidence like that rather than empirical evidence of an alleged problem. And
lawyers for the Florida chapters of the American Academy of Pediatrics, the American Academy of Family Physicians and the American College of Physicians argued that what they called the “physician gag law” prevented doctors from doing their job.
Doctors routinely ask patients about safety issues related to tobacco, drugs, alcohol, chemicals and swimming pools, Bruce Manheim of the Washington, D.C.-based law firm Ropes & Gray argued. “We think the court’s decision protects the sanctity of speech between a doctor and his or her patients and ultimately advances preventive medicine and protects the safety of children,” Manheim said.
Under the “Firearm Ownership Privacy Act,” doctors and other health care professionals would have faced fines and the loss of their licenses if they asked patients about guns in the home, “unless the practitioner in good faith believes the information is relevant to the patient’s medical care or safety or the safety of others.” The law also would have imposed sanctions if doctors “unnecessarily harass a patient about firearm ownership.”
But the anti-harassment language is too vague, Cooke ruled, and “does not provide fair notice as to what range of conduct it prohibits.”
The ruling drew praise from ACLU executive director Howard Simon. The ACLU filed an amicus brief on behalf of a group of healthcare and child welfare organizations, including the Palm Beach County Medical Society.
“The attempt to gag physicians and prevent them from practicing preventive medicine is an embarrassment for every legislator who voted to throw the First Amendment rights of medical personnel out the window based on a single and flimsy anecdotal report of an alleged problem. Could there be a clearer example of why the Florida legislature is held in such low esteem?” Simon said.
Good questions - I’m sure liberals will understand we’re only doing it for the children.
id want to know if they are sodomites, how many sexual partners they have had in the last 6 months, etc. it has a direct bearing on whether i want to be exposed to their fithly, degenerate practice.
You are assuming that the government will allow you to make those choices. It is not at all clear that you will have those choices under Obamacare.
Gun control’s sole purpose is to take away weapons from white folks....it sure does not work when used in the urban inner cities
Last time I visited my doctor, he asked about my smoking.
You know I smoke, I told him. So why ask?
The feds demand the information, he said. Now, I have a privately paid Blue Cross plan, funded out-of-pocket with no government assistance, so it’s none of their damn business.
The feds will screw with his other insurance payments if he doesn’t provide the information, he told me.
The Death Panels are now compiling information about you. Be forewarned.
Simply ask the Doctor what his/her technical training with regard to firearms is & if the Doctor declines to answer ask the Doctor if their malpractice insurance carrier knows that they are practicing outside of their area of knowledge & would he /she mind if you told them.
Answer as you wish, but to create a law, that is just dumb.
I am an old nurse and we don't make great patients, but he said one time, you know your body better than I do, so I've been patient with you...we were having a debate about weather I needed a colonoscopy or not.....he won that one..
He hinted that I night need high bloodpressure meds...on the way home I stopped at the drug store and bought a BP cuff and took my own BP for a month until my next visit...and handed him my BP log....he said OK bring me in your cuff so I can test it against mine in the office...I did, he checked it against his cuff and we never talked about BP again....I love my doctor.....
Obamacare=A nation of liars (and not just on this).....on weight, how fast one drives and on and on.
Answer questions related to MEDICAL issues only. Can they throw you in jail for lying to a doctor? It’s not as though he was a cop;)
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