SPOKANE, Wash. – Former Gonzaga John Stockton has filed a lawsuit over state sanctions on doctors who spread alleged COVID-19 disinformation.
Stockton has been an outspoken critic of the response to the COVID-19 pandemic. He was suspended from attending Gonzaga basketball games when he refused to wear a mask.
The lawsuit was filed on March 7 with COVID-19 skeptic Robert F. Kennedy Jr. among the attorneys representing Stockton. A number of medical professionals including Clarkston-based ophthalmologist Richard Eggleston are also listed as plaintiffs.
Eggleston is currently the subject of a medical commission administrative proceeding in connection to a column in which he questioned whether COVID-19 exists. The lawsuit said he’s been “active in trying to assert his Constitutional rights.”
The lawsuit names Washington Attorney General Bob Ferguson and the executive director of the Washington Medical Commission as defendants. It seeks a preliminary and permanent injunction against a policy that allows the commission to discipline doctors who promote COVID-19 misinformation.
“There is no place for the government, under the guise of regulating physicians and protecting the public, to censure, restrict or sanction the content and viewpoint of the publicly expressed views of physicians on Covid or any other subject, just because the government does not like the message or thinks it is wrong,” the lawsuit states. “Going back 70 years every judge and Supreme Court justice who has written on professional soapbox speech has stated that it is fully protected by the First Amendment and/or said that it cannot be the subject of government regulation or restriction.”
