In 2011, Florida enacted a law limiting the time doctors can ask patients if they own guns. The sentiment behind the law is that doctors, as a whole, are hostile to gun rights and cannot be trusted with such authority. So-called Documents v. Glock However, the law did not survive. In 2017, the Eleventh Circuit ruled en banc (with two majority opinions) that the law violated the First Amendment and violated due process.
I thought about this case today as I reread Judge Kavanaugh’s analysis of his position. FDA v. Hippocratic Medical Alliance. The doctors in the case apparently stood because the law regulates their speech. But these anti-gun doctors can assert that gin holds water in other contexts. Imagine that some doctors who are hostile to gun rights seek to challenge some kind of gun control policy. The reason for their injuries is that their patients are more likely to show up to the emergency room due to fewer restrictions on firearms. I believe elite medical journals could publish studies demonstrating that this is a predictable, non-attenuating chain of consequences. This argument might have been valid yesterday. But not today. atomic force microscope slam the door:
Regardless, and perhaps more importantly, doctors have never been legally allowed to challenge the government’s relaxation of general public safety requirements simply because more The injured person may then show up at the emergency room or doctor’s office. In other words, there is no third “physician qualifications” principle that allows doctors to challenge general government safety regulations. This House would not now create such a novel standing doctrine out of thin air.
Consider some examples. . . . The government has repealed certain restrictions on guns – does a surgeon have standing to sue because he may have to operate on more gunshot victims? The answer is no: the causal chain is simply too weak. Allowing physicians or other health care providers to challenge unlawfully lax general safety regulations would be an unprecedented, limitless exercise and would allow physicians to sue in federal court to challenge virtually any policy that affects public health.
I don’t know if Justice Kavanaugh has thought about it Documents v. Glock. But he had a habit of reaching out to decide problems that didn’t exist. I think this path to stand-up has been cancelled.
