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Left: John Stockton of the Utah Jazz plays the Los Angeles Lakers. (Matt A. Brown/Icon Sportswire via AP Images). Right: Presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. hosts a fireside chat. (Photo by John Lamparski/Sipa USA)(Sipa via AP Images)
Basketball legend John Stockton is getting an assist in his crusade against COVID-19 restrictions from prominent anti-vaccine attorney and independent presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
The Gonzaga great, along with various other plaintiffs, filed a federal lawsuit filed last week in Stockton’s native Washington state against the state’s attorney general and the executive director of the Washington Medical Commission over sanctions targeting “physicians who speak out against the mainstream Covid narrative.”
The filing names four physicians who say they have had their First Amendment rights negatively affected by Washington’s efforts to discipline those who spread COVID-19 misinformation. The lawsuit also anticipates an unknown class of doctors who have been disciplined by the state who could later join the litigation.
Stockton, the NBA all-time leader in assists and steals and two-time Hall of Famer, is presumably the lead plaintiff due to his stature and favored son status in the Evergreen State. The lawsuit notes that despite “an annual work-related relocation” — Stockton played 19 seasons for the Utah Jazz and reached the playoffs every year — he has lived his entire life in Spokane. He retired from the NBA in 2003.
Nowadays, Stockton hosts a podcast where he opines on “a wide variety of subjects, including Covid, health policy, the rights of individuals to make their own health and medical decisions, and sports,” the lawsuit says. The filing also identifies the celebrated point guard as “a vocal advocate against the mainstream Covid narrative.”
One of the physician plaintiffs, retired ophthalmologist Richard Eggleston, was investigated for spreading COVID-19 misinformation over a series of conservative newspaper columns he wrote. He was charged with professional misconduct in August 2022.
“Eggleston opposes Covid mandates, believes, and opines that the risk benefit profile is unfavorable for some subsets of the population,” the lawsuit reads. “He advocated in favor of off-label treatments such as Ivermectin, and against the lockdowns. In his columns, he often cites government statistics and given his take or opinions on the meaning of those statistics. His opinions are at odds with what is published in the mainstream media.”
Another plaintiff, retired physician Thomas T. Siler M.D., “also questioned the Covid narrative core principle” in an online discussion forum, according to the lawsuit. He was similarly investigated by the commission and charged with professional misconduct in 2023.
Other plaintiffs, who are not currently subject to formal discipline by the state, argue their speech is being chilled by Washington’s prohibitions on COVID-19 misinformation — a legal concept where individuals or entities refrain from engaging in otherwise protected speech for fear of upsetting the government and being punished.
Around 60 medical professionals have been investigated, prosecuted, and/or sanctioned under those prohibitions since they were put into effect in 2021, according to the 20-page lawsuit filed in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Washington.
“These cases are at least in part based on what in First Amendment parlance is called pure or soapbox speech, meaning written or verbal communications to the public,” the filing reads. “Going back seventy-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.”
The lawsuit seeks a declaratory judgment from the court that the commission’s actions in regard to COVID-19 misinformation are a violation of the First Amendment and that all the plaintiffs have a constitutional “right to express their views and criticisms of the mainstream Covid narrative to the public.”
“[A]ll Washington residents have the First Amendment right to hear the views of the three individually named physician plaintiffs, as well as any Washington licensed physician, even if the viewpoint is not consistent the with public health authorities’ and the Commission’s views on the safety and efficacy of the Covid shots, the use of off-label treatments for Covid and the efficacy of masking, or other Covid related topics,” the lawsuit argues.
The lawsuit also seeks a preliminary and permanent injunction barring the commission from investigating or sanctioning doctors who publicly pass on COVID-19 misinformation, and attorneys’ fees.
In his pro hac vice filing to appear on behalf of the plaintiffs on the opposite coast, the scion of the famous family is vouched for by lead attorney Todd S. Richardson as having a “strong background in First Amendment and censorship issues” relevant to the case “as well knowledge of the substantive issues relating to Covid policy.”
