Florida law restricting doctors' gun discussions should be overturned, ABA says in amicus brief
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The ABA has filed an amicus brief urging the Atlanta-based 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals to grant en banc review in a challenge to a Florida law that restricts doctors’ gun discussions with patients.
The 11th Circuit accepted the brief (PDF) for filing on Tuesday, according to an ABA press release. An 11th Circuit panel had upheld the law, called the Firearm Owners’ Privacy Act, in July 2014. The measure bars physicians from asking whether a patient or patient’s family owns guns absent a good-faith belief that the information is relevant to the medical care or safety of the patient, or the safety of others.
Citing First Amendment concerns, the ABA brief urges the en banc appeals court to grant a rehearing and reverse the panel decision. “By extension,” the brief says, “the precedential force of the panel decision could reach speech by other regulated professionals (such as attorneys), to limit counseling their clients unless the discussion meets a vague ‘relevance’ test set by government officials.”
According to the brief, ABA policy adopted in 2012 opposes “governmental actions and policies that limit the rights of physicians and other health care providers to inquire of their patients whether they possess guns and how they are secured in the home or to counsel their patients about the dangers of guns in the home and safe practices to avoid those dangers.”
The case is Wollschlaeger v. Governor of Florida.
