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State Says Court Should Reject ‘Docs V. Glocks’ Challenge
May 21, 2016
With a closely watched hearing little more than a month away, state attorneys have filed a final brief arguing that physicians have not shown they have legal standing to challenge Florida’s controversial “docs vs. glocks” law.
The brief filing came as the full 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals is scheduled to hear arguments June 21 in the case.
The 2011 law, backed by groups such as the National Rifle Association, seeks to restrict doctors from asking questions and recording information about patients’ gun ownership. A group of plaintiffs, including individual doctors and medical groups, filed a federal lawsuit arguing the law violates First Amendment rights.
A federal district judge sided with them, but a three-judge panel of the appeals court upheld the law in three separate rulings. The full appeals court then agreed to take up the case.
In the brief, state attorneys argued that the plaintiffs do not have standing, at least in part because they have not shown the Florida Board of Medicine would discipline them for the gun-related conversations they want to have with patients. The state’s brief also contended the law does not violate the First Amendment.
“The act’s goals are not only substantiated; they are compelling,” the state brief said. “The act shields patients who own firearms from purposely irrelevant record-keeping, questioning, discrimination, and harassment, and thereby furthers the state’s compelling interest in protecting citizens’ fundamental right to keep and bear arms for defense of self and state.”
But in a brief filed last month, attorneys for the plaintiffs argued the law violates the First Amendment rights of physicians to discuss safety-related issues with patients.
“In (the law), the Florida Legislature does what no legislative body has done before or since; it prevents doctors from providing patients with truthful advice to keep their families healthy and safe — speech that is recommended as standard protocol by national medical associations,” the plaintiffs’ brief said.
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13 Responses to “State Says Court Should Reject ‘Docs V. Glocks’ Challenge”
It’s not about the doctor asking about guns that concerns me. It’s the fact that they document it in your FEDERAL medical record. A de facto gun registration. The reason people are up in arms about guns is because there has never been a time when the government has been trying so hard to take them. When the 2nd amendment is taken away, the rest follow quickly. Wake up people. As for the kids shot in schools, it is a travesty, I feel for the victim’s families. But, just for the record, there are more kids killed every minute of every day with a hypodermic needle than by firearms. I wonder if it would be more horrific to those “choicers” if they performed abortions with a gun. Just sayin…
I can understand a requirement for discussions about guns within access for a physician in the mental health field. Any other type of medical services doesn’t really have any place being informed, nor held responsible regarding guns that patients have access to.
Is the next step in this process to have doctors held accountable if one of their patience commits a crime? This would lead to insurance companies refusing to allow doctors to treat anyone that owns a gun. This would require doctors, many whom work in excess of 60 hour weeks, the added burden of court appearances. Legal protections during questioning about a crime committed by someone they took a splinter out of five years ago.
Gun ownership and health care are not related until the law is broken and someone is shot. A person with a bullet in them is automatically questioned by the police. Why are we so focused on spending tax money to fight for laws that duplicate current laws? Why do we push and fight for laws that are not logically feasible? These kinds of laws are pushed because of lobbying, and typically to get to information needed for some other nefarious law, that can’t be gotten to due to constitutional rights.
This law is intended to obtain information solely for the purpose of full disclosure on guns. Once the information is out there, it makes it so much easier for taking them away. This is the ultimate goal of this law, it’s a go around for constitutionally protected information.
dh
Comparing school shootings and the gender choice bathroom issue is like comparing brain surgeons and proctologists.
Opposite ends with nothing to do with each other.
The Right to Bear Arms is a constitutional right. Burdening patients with gun ownership questions is akin to standing inside a voting booth questioning a voter what candidate they r voting for. A form of intimidation. Unless a patient arrives to doctors office saying they r going to shoot the place up, a doctor has no business if a patient exercises their Second Amendment right.
@dh:
Your school shooting example is ridiculous. One reason school shootings occur is because they are “gun free zones” and the crazies who do these terrible deeds know it. I own a gun. I have a CC permit AND I am a teacher. I’d love to be able to carry my weapon to work with me, but it’s not allowed. Some rules are ridiculous, others aren’t.
I can’t get a doc to tell me definitively whether or not his/her personal assets or malpractice insurance would cover any injury or death to my person or that of a family member or friend if I followed his recommendations for firearm handling and we were harmed as a result of not being able to retrieve our firearm quickly enough.
I wonder why that is?
So I guess all those school shooting are okay. It’s okay to blow a hole the size of my fist through a six year old? This is not taking guns away but an attempt to stop a few instances of violence. We’re worried about who uses the bathroom but on shooting children, nothing, not one attempt to stop any of them.
@dh you’re naive if you think someone who has nafarious thoughts is going to tell the doctor they have a weapon.
My doctor does a lot for me but policing my guns will never be one of them.
This is just another way the government is overstepping its boundaries.
Just curious, but if the law is overturned, would doctors then go thru extensive training in order to “advise” patients who own firearms on safety issues and teach the patients the rules of safe gun handling and rules of engagement with a perpetrator?
So a Doctor “suspects someone of having mental issues”, what then? What does he do with the information? Go to the Police? The FBI? Just exactly what does a medical doctor do with this data? Just how Doctor/Patient confidentiality are you willing to give up? To put in perspective; Adam Lanza’s mother was trying to get him committed; but HIS rights trumped everything. James Homes was seeing a Psychiatrist, who warned others in her office of his violent nature, but not the police. Psychiatry is not a exact science, so how do balance the Doctor’s opinion with someone’s rights?
Better rethink the whole “wild west” violence, it was all in the mind of Hollywood. Unless you were a young male about, 17 to 25, your chance of being shot was miniscule. Even young men had a small chance of being shot. Gunfights did happen like they do on the silver screen, Matt Dillion won’t save you.
I do agree that we have lost some of our civil nature. But it come from the “entitled”, who demand instead of work for.
dh,
There are well over 200 million law abiding gun owners who hold more that 17 billion rounds of ammo.
Sweetheart, if law abiding gun owners were the problem, you’d damn well know it.
dh, you’re really missing the whole issue of this proposed law. It is that the law would create firearm registration list and would be on the permanent records of patients. This is currently illegal by federal regulation. It would also be a haphazard and very possibly biased list due to each doctors interpretation of the patient giving the information. Doctors records are not private. They will share your information with every group they see fit. Every patient signs paperwork giving them the right to do so as a standard practice. If doctors really want to go the safety route all they have to do is hand out a standard firearm safety brochure to everyone as a set standard. The AMA is anti-gun, it has been for decades. This is why the questions focus on gun ownership instead vehicles, knives, pools or any other possible hazard a patient may own. This all started because some pediatricians in South Florida refused to take on patients unless the parents complied with the questions. So it was the docs who first started with the discrimination against gun owners. It’s all about the anti-gun stance of the AMA and their affiliations.
I really don’t know what the big deal is with this proposed law. We hear all the time how we need to look at the people who do crimes with guns, especially on mass murders and this seems to be trying to do this. If a doctor suspects someone of having mental issues, suffering severe depression, or whatever signals a potential problem then shouldn’t the doctor be able to determine if that person has a gun? We hear all the time how neighbors of a mass shooter never suspected a thing or didn’t think the problem was so severe. So who is left to look out for problems if not doctors.
This whole guns first above everything else is a bit out of control. It’s like a cult with some people, hoarding ammo and buying bigger and bigger guns not practical for any thing except target practice and killing other people. We have not been this way since the days of the ‘wild ‘west’. We seemed to loose some of our civil nature more and more and the NRA’s President with his conspiracies and nutty talk is only making it worse. The NRA was never like this in the past.