Do No Harm Asks SCOTUS To Protect Doctors’ Free Speech

SALT LAKE CITY, UT; April 28, 2026 – Today, Do No Harm and Dr. Azadeh Khatibi petitioned the Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) to protect free speech in medical training by striking down California’s mandate that Continuing Medical Education (CME) courses contain implicit bias curriculum for physicians. The Pacific Legal Foundation represents both parties in this action.

In 2023, Do No Harm, joined by Dr. Khatibi, filed a lawsuit in the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California, Azadeh Khatibi et al. v. Kristina Lawson et al., arguing that California’s CME mandate violates the First Amendment rights of CME instructors by compelling their speech and placing unconstitutional restrictions on the free exercise of speech. The district court dismissed the complaint, and the Ninth Circuit upheld that decision, claiming CME courses constitute government speech based on the State’s extensive regulation of the medical field—even though the State does not create, review, or edit the content of CME courses.

Now, Do No Harm is asking SCOTUS to decide whether a state can compel private professionals to convey a contested ideological message as a condition of teaching courses required for a professional license. Do No Harm argues California’s law erases the constitutional boundary between government and private speech, threatens the speech rights of countless professionals, and directly conflicts with SCOTUS precedents protecting against compelled speech.

“By mandating ideologically charged racial theories be taught in continuing medical education courses, California infringes on physicians’ free speech rights,” said Stanley Goldfarb, MD, Chairman at Do No Harm. “We are asking the Supreme Court to intervene to protect these critical rights in the field of medicine. Doctors do not need lawmakers telling them what to think when providing medical advice to patients. There is no evidence so-called systemic implicit bias exists in healthcare, and propagating such debunked pseudoscience only deepens suspicion between patients and providers. Physicians must be trained to assess each patient’s unique needs, not focus on immutable characteristics like race. We urge the Court to take up our case and resolve California’s overreach once and for all.”

See Do No Harm’s Cert Petition here.

See the case page here.

More Details:

• California requires physicians to complete 50 hours of CME every two years to maintain their medical licenses.
• Under the state’s more recent mandate, nearly every CME course must now include specific “implicit bias” curriculum, including: “[e]xamples of how implicit bias affects perceptions and treatment decisions of physicians and surgeons, leading to disparities in health outcomes,” or “[s]trategies to address how unintended biases in decisionmaking may contribute to health care disparities by shaping behavior and producing differences in medical treatment along lines of race, ethnicity, gender identity, sexual orientation, age, socioeconomic status, or other characteristics,” or a combination of both.
• Courses that omit the mandated content are ineligible for CME credit, and instructors who refuse to teach it face professional consequences, such as loss of business, reputational harm, and barriers to future teaching opportunities.
• Both Dr. Khatibi, a board-certified ophthalmologist, and members of Do No Harm create and deliver their own original CME content.

Do No Harm, established in April 2022, has rapidly gained recognition and made significant strides in its mission to safeguard healthcare from ideological threats. It has over 50,000 members, including doctors, nurses, physicians, and concerned citizens across all 50 states and 14 countries.