California effort to confront implicit bias among doctors faces 1st Amendment challenge

Los Angeles anesthesiologist Dr. Marilyn Singleton was outraged about a California requirement that every continuing medical education course include training in implicit bias — the ways in which physicians’ unconscious attitudes might contribute to racial and ethnic disparities in healthcare.

Singleton, who is Black and has practiced for 50 years, sees calling doctors out for implicit bias as divisive, and argues that the state cannot legally require her to teach the idea in her continuing education classes. She has sued the Medical Board of California, asserting a constitutional right not to teach something she doesn’t believe.

Read more on the Los Angeles Times.