California repeals Covid-19 misinformation law

California Governor Gavin Newsom repealed a law that made it possible for doctors to be punished for spreading Covid-19 misinformation—just a year after implementing it.

The law aimed to combat a rise in misinformation linked to unnecessary Covid deaths across the country. It faced backlash—including two lawsuits from doctors and advocacy groups arguing it violated doctors’ constitutional right to free speech—and was quietly repealed on September 30.

The law allowed the state medical board to act if a doctor spread Covid misinformation with “malicious intent or an intent to mislead,” classifying that speech as a form of unprofessional conduct.

It only applied to discussions between a doctor and patient, and not to “any speech outside of discussions directly related to Covid-19 treatment,” Newsom wrote in a letter to the California State Assembly, Healthcare Brew previously reported.

Under the law, if the board found a doctor had spread misinformation, the doctor could have faced disciplinary action, including losing their medical license.

Proponents of the law had argued it could have functioned as a warning of sorts to doctors that state medical boards wouldn’t tolerate medical misinformation, MedPage Today reported.

But critics had argued the law was too broad, and that because scientific consensus on Covid changes as scientists learn more about the virus, it’d be hard to define what exactly constitutes misinformation, according to MedPage Today.

US District Judge William Shubb temporarily halted the law on January 26, just weeks after it went into effect, ruling it was “unconstitutionally vague,” KCRA reported.

“Covid-19 is such a new and evolving area of scientific study, it may be hard to determine which scientific conclusions are ‘false’ at a given point in time,” Shubb said in the ruling.

The New Civil Liberties Alliance, one of the advocacy groups that sued the state over the law, hailed the repeal as a “major victory.”

The law “would have deprived plaintiffs’ patients of their First Amendment rights to receive advice and hear treatment options unfettered by professional discipline fears,” the group wrote in a statement.