Sunday, February 19, 2017

Florida doctors now free to speak

In 2011 the Florida legislature passed a law that if doctors talked to their patients about gun safety and gun storage, they could be fined up to $10,000 and lose their medical licenses.

The N.R.A. pushed this law, claiming doctors discussing gun safety violated a patient’s constitutional rights.  I am not making this up.

Last week the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit struck down key parts of the law as violating the free speech clause of the First Amendment.  


(In Pennsylvania the Legislature is busily at work trying to tell doctors when and how they can perform abortions.  This will also be unconstitutional when it gets to the courts, but why do we have such stupid legislation in the first place?)

2 comments:

  1. Stupid legislation comes from stupid legislators. Like I said before about Forrest Gump's words "stupid is as stupid does."

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  2. We certainly have a lot of "stupid is" in state legislatures.

    ReplyDelete