As we were engrossed in holiday celebrations, some of us missed that a couple of weeks ago a federal court upheld the constitutionality of Florida’s Firearm Owners Privacy Law, otherwise known as the ‘Docs v. Glocks‘ law. This is the third time that this same 11th Circuit U.S. District Court panel made this decision.
If you do not know, this Florida Act was intended to prevent providers from asking whether a patient owns a gun when gun ownership is irrelevant to a patient’s medical care.
The Act quickly made its way to the Governor’s desk in 2011 after gun rights groups hyper-responded to a woman’s complaint that her child’s pediatrician discontinued their relationship after she refused to answer the doctor’s questions about guns in the home.
If you have a child, you understand that questions about gun ownership are routine for many pediatricians and family providers. These questions are asked in order to remind parents about gun safety, just like when they ask about any other harmful and possibly deadly activities.
Instead of seeing this as a public health concern, gun rights activists saw this as providers pushing their political ideology on patients and rushed to have the Docs v. Glocks law passed in the Florida legislature.
On its face, the Florida law prevents health care providers from discharging their patients who refuse to answer gun ownership questions. If ownership is disclosed, providers are prohibited from intentionally writing down that their patients own a gun, unless ownership is directly related to their “patient’s medical care or safety.” The law requires that health care providers “respect a patient’s right to privacy” and “refrain from making a written inquiry.” Though a provider must also refrain from “asking questions concerning ownership of a firearm,” the law allows a provider to make necessary inquiries if the provider:
“in good faith believes that this information is relevant to the patient’s medical care or safety, or the safety of others, may make such a verbal or written inquiry.“
Within four days of the bill becoming law, several Florida medical providers and organizations (including the American Academy of Pediatrics), sought legal action questioning the constitutionality of the Act. They alleged it violated both the First and Fourteenth Amendments because it was vague, inconsistent, and violated their due process rights.
For the third time, the federal district court held that the law is constitutional. They found that the Florida law only restricts providers from making “irrelevant inquiry and record keeping.” The court disagreed with the plaintiffs that the law violates their freedom of speech in part because the law allows providers to “speak with patients about firearms generally” and document gun ownership when it is relevant to the patient’s medical care.
A single justice, who wrote a 74-page dissent this past July, refused to write another opinion, but stood by his previous statements:
“[D]octors’ jobs are hard enough when the state does not enact laws that force them to think twice about asking questions and providing information that may save lives. Given how vague this act is, thinking twice will not be nearly enough for doctors to figure out what to do to protect their patients, on the one hand, and to comply with the act, on the other.“
It is part of a doctor’s job to save lives. Providing information on gun safety is doctors just doing their jobs in an attempt to save their patients’ lives. Patients, however, can simply refuse to answer questions about gun ownership when asked. I understand that part of the problem that prompted the Florida law was because doctors were refusing treatment to patients for their parents refusal to answer this question, ultimately kicking them out of their practice.
Instead of creating a law that focused on what a doctor can and cannot question, the law should have only exclusively focused on consequences of when a provider oversteps his bounds of ending the patient relationship when a patient simply raises their basic right to refuse to answer any question. Even this type of law is not needed; after all, every state medical board has consequences in place for this type of breach of medical ethics.
Frankly, the Florida law is another successful NRA attempt to use the legislature for their benefit. They don’t care about saving lives, they only care about the Second Amendment.
For more on whether doctors should talk to their patients about guns, watch this video:
Featured image is a screenshot from this video.
