AB stands for Assembly Bill, and in reality this means that it was passed by the California legislature. Those of us who live in California know that the California legislature is overwhelmingly liberal, and part of being a staunch liberal is never to have to say that you are sorry.
From the Liberty Justice Center:
“Assembly Bill 2098, signed by Governor Gavin Newsom on September 30, 2022, authorizes the Medical Board of California to sanction and even revoke the licenses of doctors. Specifically, this affects doctors who share information about COVID-19 that is not consistent with what the Medical Board deems to be the official “scientific consensus.”
Under the terms of this law, California’s Medical Board was authorized to punish doctors who shared COVID-19 “misinformation” with their patients. The law defines ‘misinformation” as anything that “is contradicted by contemporary scientific consensus.’
The goal of California’s AB 2098 law was to chill free speech, specifically, the views of any doctors whose assessment of available medical facts differed from the State of California.
What makes AB 2098 even more incredulous is the composition of the California Medical Board. Not all Board members are doctors, or even hold a medical degree. The Board President, for instance, is a lawyer.
So in the eyes of the astute California legislature … take decision making and free speech out of the hands of the doctors who are actually caring for patients, and instead put it solely in the hands of bureaucrats, many of whom are not physicians.
Think about that for a short minute. Anyone with a modicum of intelligence would concur that this is not only blatantly wrong, but also likely unconstitutional.
From C&C:
“A few days ago, California bill SB815 was sneakily amended to include a provision to repeal AB2098, the state’s currently-enjoined doctor censorship law. Everything you need to know is in the LA Times’s description of that law as ‘a well-intentioned poorly worded and ultimately doomed effort to curb the most flagrant cases of COVID-related falsehoods by people wielding medical licenses.’
The LA Times reported there are four separate pending lawsuits attacking AB 2098. The state clearly doesn’t like its chances of winning, especially since one group of plaintiffs has already obtained a preliminary injunction against the unconstitutional law. Judge William Shubb of the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of California ruled that the law’s ‘unclear phrasing and structure’ could have a ‘chilling effect,’ and even called the law ‘grammatically incoherent.’”
So, in essence, instead of the California legislature saying “we were horribly wrong on AB2098,” they just quietly sneak its repeal into something else, hoping that the unsuspecting voters will not notice.
FYI: Here in California, they probably will not notice!
Also worth noting is the fact that a potential future Democratic presidential candidate signed the “grammatically incoherent” AB2098 into law.
9/14/23