Local health providers suing CA for mandated “implicit bias” training

Oakland anesthesiologist Marilyn Singleton and LA ophthalmologist Azadeh Khatibi are suing the State of California for requiring doctors to be taught about their subconscious (often racial) biases. The Globe shares doctors' concerns that their First Amendment rights are being overruled—via forced alignment to gov't ideology on a sensitive, controversial topic.

In 2019, California passed Assembly Bill 241 by then-Assemblywoman Sydney Kamlager-Dove (D-Los Angeles), requiring that starting in 2022 teachers of continuing medical education for doctors would include “implicit bias” training–namely telling doctors they are bigoted whether they realize it or not. Kamlager-Dove is now serving as the U.S. representative for California’s 37th congressional district.

In other words bias is asserted but not proved. There are some crimes so serious that innocence is no defense.

All courses are required to tell doctors “how implicit bias affects perceptions and treatment decisions of physicians and surgeons, leading to disparities in health outcomes” and include “strategies to address” this supposed subconscious bias.

Now, two doctors who teach continuing medical education courses in California are challenging the law on First Amendment grounds. Their federal lawsuit says the requirement for teaching implicit bias amounts to compelled speech in violation of the First Amendment.

California “cannot condition a speaker’s ability to offer courses for credit on the requirement that she espouse the government’s favored view on a controversial topic,” the lawsuit argues.

Interestingly, neither of the doctors suing is white. One plaintiff, Azadeh Khatibi, is an Iranian immigrant, who is now an ophthalmologist in Los Angeles.

The other plaintiff, Marilyn Singleton is a black anesthesiologist who finds the notion that white doctors are racists who need to be disabused of their prejudices obnoxious and untrue.

This article originally appeared in the California Globe. Read the whole thing here.

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