Medical professionals still fighting COVID 'misinformation' probes after California scraps law

Weeks after California scrapped its vague statutory restrictions on what doctors can say about COVID-19 so a federal appeals court couldn't strike them down, medical professionals to the north continue fighting regulatory proceedings to punish them for challenging the presumed consensus.

The College of Registered Nurses of Saskatchewan subjected Leah McInnes to three days of disciplinary hearings this month for her activism two years ago against "existing and anticipated vaccine mandates and vaccine passports" and social media comments, according to her lawyers at the Justice Centre for Constitutional Freedoms.

They focused on "calling of witnesses and tendering of evidence," whereas her Nov. 9 hearing will focus on the arguments, senior counsel Andre Memauri told Just the News.

JCCF previously represented Canadian medical professionals punished by their employers for expressing concerns about COVID vaccines.

In the state of Washington, doctors must wait for the results of their Washington Medical Commission disciplinary hearings before their lawsuit against WMC's alleged "gross overreach" of regulatory authority can move forward, Benton County Superior Court Judge Joseph Burrowes ruled this month, denying their motion for reconsideration.

"We are in the process of appealing this decision" by Nov. 2 so Michael Turner, Richard Wilkinson and Ryan Cole don't have to undergo the hearings before getting relief from the commission's two-year-old "COVID-19 Misinformation Position Statement," Silent Majority Foundation director of operations Rob Waites told Just the News. 

Another plaintiff, Idaho's Renata Moon, did not renew her Washington license this spring because "she felt coerced to surrender her license due to" investigations of the other three, an unconstitutional chilling effect, the quartet's July lawsuit says. 

Washington State University told Moon in March it had reported the pediatrician to the WMC because her presentation in a December 2022 COVID vaccine forum hosted by U.S. Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Wis., "could be interpreted as a possible spread" of misinformation. 

It declined to renew her contract as a clinical associate professor of medicine in June because "the needs of the college are moving in a different direction," without further elaborating, The Epoch Times reported.

Licensing investigations appear to have served as a common method for medical regulators across North America to intimidate and hobble doctors who question common COVID interventions with little rigorous evidence or promote alternative treatments such as ivermectin.

Family physician Scott Jensen endured five investigations by the Minnesota Board of Medical Practice, appointed by Democratic Gov. Tim Walz, that overlapped with Jensen's unsuccessful run for governor in 2021 and 2022. The GOP nominee pledged the board would be "dealt with" if he won.

The Saskatchewan proceeding against McInnes is partly a semantic dispute. 

The regulator charged the nurse with "professional misconduct" for publicly identifying as such while "posting disinformation and/or misleading information," including by referring to "mandates" in her protests. The western province eventually opted against forcing the jabs.

"Of note, virtually the entire media apparatus, government officials and medical authorities have frequently (and almost unanimously) referred to vaccine policies by government and other entities as 'mandates,' in Saskatchewan and across the country," JCCF said when her hearings started.

The hearing notice cites her protest outside a hospital in November 2021 and online claims that "damage [was] already happening far and wide from medical coercion," Canadian COVID interventions were "non scientifically proven" and mandates violate "the Nuremburg [sic] Code."

McInnes also shared a post that said vaccinated and unvaccinated people "carry equal viral loads and as such can both easily transmit virus" – essentially the same claim made by then-Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Director Rochelle Walensky in July 2021.

Her lawyer Memauri told Just the News "the uncontroverted expert evidence demonstrated" that the regulator "spread misinformation in one of its own social media posts regarding Covid," which is "much more damaging to the public than if a single nurse hypothetically spread misinformation." He declined to provide the evidence until "the matter has concluded."

The Washington physicians accuse WMC of circumventing notice-and-comment requirements when it adopted the position statement and treated it as enforceable. The Silent Majority Foundation's Waites called it an unconstitutional "gag order."

Issuing a statement of charges that tells a doctor "how the WMC intends to punish him" and requiring a doctor to "defend himself against these baseless charges" qualifies as punishment triggering court jurisdiction regardless of how the proceedings end, Waites told Just the News.

The plaintiffs' Sept. 21 motion for reconsideration pointed Judge Burrowes to a ruling weeks earlier by the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, which is binding on his court, that emphasizes judges must consider the likelihood of success on the merits when evaluating a motion for preliminary injunction related to a constitutional right.

While none of them is required to exhaust "administrative remedies" because "the loss of speech rights is irreparable," Wilkinson in fact received his final order from the WMC on the eve of the hearing before Burrowes, the motion said. He must pay a fine and submit to a "physical, mental, and psychological examination."

Burrowes took two paragraphs in a 41-page order Oct. 3 to dismiss their arguments, saying they didn't turn over Wilkinson's final order and ignoring their constitutional arguments. He also dismissed the motion for injunction by Moon, the Idaho doctor who did not renew her Washington license.