A federal appeals court on June 3 revived a lawsuit against medical boards over their COVID-19 censorship campaigns. The Association of American Physicians and Surgeons Educational Foundation (AAPS) suit against three boards can move forward, the U.S.
Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit ruled, reversing a U.S. district judge’s dismissal of the case.
“AAPS sufficiently alleges injury-in-fact, traceability, and redressability for its First Amendment claims against the board defendants, meaning it has standing to pursue those claims,” U.S. Circuit Judge Kurt Engelhardt, writing for the unanimous panel, said.
U.S. District Judge Jeffrey Brown in 2023 dismissed the AAPS suit, ruling that the organization lacked standing to pursue the litigation.
Judge Brown wrongly barred AAPS from amending its complaint, or bringing forward an updated version, the appeals court said. He cited a local rule, but that rule undercuts federal judicial rules, according to the panel. “Second, the district court did not give any explicit, much less meaningful, explanation as to why it refused leave to amend beyond a citation to Galveston Division Local Rule 6 and a cant invocation of futility, undue delay, and unfair prejudice that involved no analysis at all,” the panel said.
The circuit judges also said AAPS’s claims should have been dismissed without prejudice, which would have enabled a fresh suit to be filed. The medical board defendants are the American Board of Internal Medicine, the .
