Legal Updates: Missouri v. Biden Developments & Hoeg v. Newsom Victory

Some developments in both of our censorship cases...

A few brief updates on my legal cases. First, on Missouri v. Biden: we expected to hear from the Supreme Court last Wednesday, but a new wrinkle at the Fifth Circuit has delayed a Supreme Court ruling. The circuit court is considering our petition to expand the injunction to include additional Federal agencies in the preliminary injunction—particularly CISA, the government’s central clearinghouse and switchboarding operation for all federal censorship activities. The Fifth circuit gave the government time to respond to our request this week and will decide soon whether to consider written and/or oral arguments regarding expanding the injunction.

In the meantime, the Supreme Court is waiting to see what the circuit court does in this regard before hearing the government’s appeal. Regardless of whether the circuit court expands the scope of the injunction or leaves the current injunction intact, the Supreme Court will then rule on the government’s appeal of the injunction. Naturally, I will keep you posted on any developments.

In other news, you may recall my other free speech lawsuit aimed at the censorship law in California, AB 2098, which effectively places a gag order on physicians who deviate from the government’s preferred covid policies. As I reported previously, the district court granted our request for a preliminary injunction against the law, indicating that it likely violated the Fourteenth Amendment (equal protection) and First Amendment (free speech) rights enumerated in the U.S. Constitution.

It seems that Governor Newsom and the California legislature saw the writing on the wall, and rather than having their unconstitutional law struck down by the court, they have quietly repealed the law legislatively, slipping this into another bill that Governor Newsom signed yesterday. (I think Newsom is preparing for a presidential campaign, and a possible future debate with Governor De Santis, where their drastically different covid policies will no doubt be discussed.) Newsom even had the gall to tell one of our physician friends, a knowns opponent of AB 2098, that repealing the law was his (Newsom’s) idea! Well, he may have suggested it to the legislature for political reasons—to avoid a public defeat in the courts—but let’s not forget that Newsom himself signed AB 2098 when he could have vetoed it.

Our attorneys nevertheless submitted to the court this week a motion for summary judgment to strike down the law (even though it’s been legislatively repealed) just to drive home the point. After all, it could be fun to hear the state’s lawyers argue publicly in court that the case should be vacated because the law has been repealed. In any event, this legislative development was a major victory for medical freedom in California.

Finally, I wanted to share this profile piece, published today in the New York Sun — with permission I’m republishing the intro paragraphs and a link to the full article if you are interested in reading the rest…

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Meet the Physician Who Stepped Forward To Tackle the Leviathan of Government Censorship

By M.J. KOCH, The New York Sun

Aaron Kheriaty didn’t set out to be a plaintiff in a potentially historic First Amendment case. He was happy being a physician and professor of psychiatry at the University of California. He was an expert in medical ethics. Then he lost his job for refusing a Covid vaccine. And one day he got a call from a lawyer for Missouri, about a lawsuit against the Biden administration over censorship.

Dr. Kheriaty had already sued his employer, “the largest educational system in the world,” because it had fired him, he notes. He’d sued California and Governor Newsom. “I guess they can take me out and shoot me,” he thought. “But at that point, I wasn’t too worried about what was going to happen or my public reputation. I just wanted to try to fight to do the right thing here.”

That’s how the first private plaintiff got involved in the case now known as Missouri v. Biden. Dr. Kheriaty reached out to his colleagues, epidemiologists Jayanta Bhattacharya and Martin Kulldorff, whose criticism of Covid lockdowns in October of 2020 was declared “dangerous” by Dr. Anthony Fauci and other government officials. They agreed to serve as co-plaintiffs….

Click here to read the rest of the article (note: it may appear that it’s behind a paywall, but you get two free articles if you enter an email).

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