Doctors in California sued the state for mandating so-called “implicit bias” training for physicians in continuing education courses, according to a press release from Pacific Legal Foundation (PLF).
California passed Assembly Bill 241 in 2019, which mandates so-called “implicit bias” trainings for doctors by law, in which they are required to learn about their so-called “unconscious bias” against certain racial groups. Dr. Azadeh Khatibi and Dr. Marilyn Singleton filed a lawsuit against the state along with Pacific Legal Foundation and Do No Harm, a medical activist organization, arguing that being forced to participate in so-called “implicit bias” training by the state violates the First Amendment. (RELATED: Doctors Sue California Over Amendments To Physician Assisted Suicide Law)
California’s mandated implicit bias training ruins patient trust in their medical providers and leads to worse health outcomes for the very people it’s supposed to help.
It’s time to reject these trainings in California––and across the nation. https://t.co/Rzi7j5KYOc
— Do No Harm (@donoharm) August 1, 2023
“Requiring this training forces instructors to espouse views they may find unpersuasive and unsupported by evidence. Implicit bias is far from an established fact, yet the law demands that CME instructors presume all healthcare providers are infected with implicit bias and thus treat patients differently,” the PLF press release says.
California Gov. Gavin Newsom has enacted laws regulating doctors in the past, such as Assembly Bill 2098, which aimed to penalize doctors who share unorthodox information about COVID with patients. Judge William B. Shubb issued a preliminary injunction against the law in January, saying it violated doctors’ rights to free speech and due process.
“Neither doctors nor patients need California legislators to tell them what they should be thinking about or what advice they should be giving when treating their patients,” reads a press release from the PLF.
“The idea of unconscious bias states that one acts on those biases, and there’s no evidence of this happening in the medical community. Medical professionals take the Hippocratic oath to do no harm, and do not need lawmakers or medical organizations to tell them what they should think when providing medical advice to patients,” Dr. Stanley Goldfarb, Do No Harm Chairman told the Daily Caller News Foundation.
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