Debate Emerges On Carving Up ‘Docs V. Glocks’ Law

July 28, 2016

As a federal appeals court ponders the constitutionality of Florida’s “docs v. glocks” law, attorneys this week debated in court documents whether it would be possible to jettison parts of the controversial measure — and keep others.

The full 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals heard arguments June 21 in a challenge by physician groups and individual physicians to the 2011 law, which seeks to restrict doctors from asking questions and recording information about patients’ gun ownership. Two days after the arguments, the court asked attorneys to file briefs about the issue of “severability,” a legal concept that can involve eliminating unconstitutional parts of laws while retaining other provisions.

Attorney General Pam Bondi’s office and a lawyer for the physicians filed briefs Monday taking starkly different positions on the question.

Bondi’s office said the appeals court could carve out unconstitutional pieces of the law while keeping the rest intact.

“The act’s provisions are functionally independent, and any invalid provision can easily be severed without disrupting the operation or integrity of the remaining provisions,” Deputy Solicitor General Rachel Nordby wrote. “If the court determines that any provision of the act is invalid, the court should apply the doctrine of severability and uphold all remaining valid provisions of the act.”

But plaintiffs say the law, dubbed by the Legislature as the Firearm Owners’ Privacy Act, cannot be broken apart. The plaintiffs contend the law violates doctors’ First Amendment rights.

“The challenged provisions of FOPA (Firearm Owners’ Privacy Act) are parts of a single legislative act, adopted by the Florida Legislature as a package, with a shared unconstitutional purpose,” plaintiffs’ attorney Douglas Hallward-Driemeier wrote. “In enacting FOPA, the Florida Legislature indisputably intended to chill speech by health care practitioners about firearms — and indeed a particular viewpoint on the same — with which the Legislature disagreed.”

The law, which is backed by gun-rights groups such as the National Rifle Association, seeks to place a series of restrictions on doctors and other health providers. For example, it seeks to prevent physicians from entering information about gun ownership into medical records if the physicians know the information is not “relevant” to patients’ medical care or safety or to the safety of other people.

Also, the law says doctors should refrain from asking about gun ownership by patients or family members unless the doctors believe in “good faith” that the information is relevant to medical care or safety. Also, the law seeks to prevent doctors from discriminating against patients or “harassing” them because of owning firearms.

In addressing the severability question, Hallward-Driemeier’s brief said some members of the appeals court during oral arguments posed a “hypothetical scenario” about possibly trying to narrow the anti-discrimination provision.

The appeals court typically does not signal when it will rule in cases, and judges have been divided on the constitutionality of the law — widely known as the “docs v. glocks” law.

A U.S. District Court judge blocked the law from taking effect, but a three-judge panel of the appeals court upheld the law in three rulings. The full appeals court then took the somewhat-unusual step of agreeing to hear the case.

by Jim Saunders, The News Service of Florida

Comments

3 Responses to “Debate Emerges On Carving Up ‘Docs V. Glocks’ Law”

  1. Aceman on August 1st, 2016 1:30 pm

    amazing how a government agency can use it as a information gathering service. Its not about a doctor its about getting information to use for a file on gun ownership. Even ray Charles can see that from his grave …….

  2. Robinhood on July 29th, 2016 3:03 pm

    When asked by a doctor if you own a “GUN” all you need to do is either tell them it is “None of their Business” or just lie to them and tell them “No Guns” are in the home.

  3. Bernard Sullivan on July 29th, 2016 1:43 pm

    There is a great difference between expressing an opinion and in recording, and building a file, of contrary opinions to be used against a Constitution-guaranteed right exercised by the holders of those contrary opinions.

    Doctors cannot — cannot — record information about patient or patients’ parents’ gun ownership without involving themselves in politics, and that they have no right to do in the context of delivering heath care and especially with the implied threat, or the practice of, refusing such care.

    Let them lecture. Let them distribute pamphlets or fliers, so long as they don’t target ObamaCare families from whom the choice of a physician has been removed. Other patients can seek another doctor if the anti-gun position of the doctor becomes offensive. But doctors should have should have to cease and desist at the first demand of ObamaCare families, from whom the right to pick their own physician has been taken (contrary to the bald-faced lies of our President). But do not let them require participation in record-keeping of gun ownership. That is contrary to the Florida Code, which prohibits the required registration of firearms by any entity, public or private.

Written by William Reynolds · Filed Under News