Florida’s ‘Legislative Illusion’ on Privacy in the Doctor’s Office

[Diana Bardyn]

Florida’s ‘Legislative Illusion’ on Privacy in the Doctor’s Office

On July 8, 2012 

By Diana Robinson-Bardyn | Opinion

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Mon dieu! When the NRA comes to town with a new wetdream and truckloads of money, our legislators in Tallahassee are more than willing to forget their common sense.

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When Tallahassee pitted the safety of our children against the special interests of the NRA the outcome was HB155, a bill restricting Florida's doctors from discussing firearms with their patients.

Photo: flickr by dmason

When it comes to routine questioning about potential health and safety risks practitioners can and do discuss many issues. They can talk about swimming pools; there is no lobby with endless funds fighting to keep that discussion out of the doctor’s office. Doctors can continue to talk about drugs; after all the US has an ongoing war on drugs. So while swimming pools, cigarettes, drugs, alcohol and other issues of concern to children’s safety can be discussed, a doctor-patient discussion on guns in the home, according to HB155, was an infringement of our Second Amendment rights.

Forget about common sense and a moral obligation to our nation’s children. Forget about their human rights and the alarming statistics reminding us that every day eight American children are killed by firearms. Forget about the 1st Amendment, and protecting free speech. Mon dieu! When the NRA comes to town with a new wetdream and truckloads of money our legislators are more than willing to do a lot of forgetting.

“Guns in the home are a proven deadly risk,” Dan Gross, president of the Brady Center, said in a statement following Cooke’s decision. “Guns kill eight children every day. The government cannot tell us or our doctors that we are prohibited from discussing the deadly risks posed by guns.”

It did not take long for HB155 or The Firearm Owners’ Privacy Act (FOPA) to be challenged, and in June 2012, it was permanently enjoined by Judge Marcia Cooke, a Bush appointee to the US District Court for the Southern District of Florida. She held that the Firearm Owners Privacy Act “violates doctors’ First Amendment rights because it is so vague that it fails to provide them with clear guidance on how to abide by it”. The judge further noted that the act “did not constitute a permissible regulation of professional speech or occupational conduct that imposed a mere incidental burden on speech.”  “Rather truthful, non-misleading speech is the direct target of the Act.”

The Firearm Owners’ Privacy Act, however, simply does not interfere with the right to keep and bear arms. The State’s arguments rest on a legislative illusion. — Judge Marcia Cook

So while there is now a permanent order blocking the law, the ruling could be appealed to the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals in Atlanta, resulting in another costly legal battle. Our legislators seem unable to ‘stand their ground’ when facing frontal assaults from the NRA.

Legislative illusions will no doubt continue to be in plentiful supply. But it will take some very strong magic to explain why, on the one hand, the state would seek to prohibit doctors from addressing safety issues with those of us who bear arms, while on the other hand, would enforce mandatory counseling for those of us who bear children.

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Sources:
Firearm Owners’ Privacy Act
Case 1:11-cv-22026-MGC Document 105 Entered on FLSD Docket 06/29/2012

 

Diana Bardyn

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