One of the bedrock principles of our republic is the freedom to speak on matters of public importance and to criticize elected officials without fear of reprisal. The founding fathers understood that government poses a unique threat to this core freedom, and so the First Amendment comes first in our Constitution. Dr. Scott Jensen’s lawsuit against the Minnesota Board of Medical Practice and its members illustrates in frightening detail the very weaponization of government that the founders feared.
From spring 2020 to March 2023, the Board launched a series of investigations threatening Dr. Jensen’s license to practice medicine, with 18 complaints in all. Each of these complaints was based on his pure political speech. Not a single one was lodged by a patient of his, and none of them involved the practice of medicine. The Board investigations were purely based on attacks by his political opponents. They faulted him for exercising his First Amendment rights to file an affidavit in a lawsuit in another state, post on social media, and speak on the campaign trail in his run for governor. One “complaint” from a random, anonymous member of the public was even based on a DFL press release. The Board’s members are appointed by Gov. Tim Walz.
Dr. Jensen was finally forced into a “Notice of Conference” in March 2023 that focused almost entirely on his political speech. After the conference, all complaints against him were dismissed. They were meritless and without basis for investigation in the first place.
The chilling effect of a licensing board threatening one’s livelihood because of political speech is substantial. To make things worse, the Board of Medical Practice violated two statutes in order to illegally hold an open investigation over Dr. Jensen for the entirety of the gubernatorial race in 2022. Faced with the possibility of having his livelihood destroyed for political speech, Dr. Jensen declined speaking engagements, self-censored in his communications to the public and patients, and spent thousands of hours complying with demands that the Board was specifically not empowered to make.
After all the complaints brought against his professional license were dismissed, Dr. Jensen decided to stand up for his rights and those of other professionals and sue the Board for its years-long, systemic Constitutional abuses. He filed a complaint in federal District Court last June alleging numerous First Amendment violations, including retaliation and chilling of his speech. Because of the Board’s investigations of his speech, Minnesota was deprived of a full-throated debate over Gov. Walz’s stunning upheaval of our freedoms in the name of COVID.
Last year the Board of Medical Practice, by and through the Attorney General’s Office, moved to dismiss the complaint filed by Dr. Jensen for “lack of standing.” They claim that somehow, Dr. Jensen wasn’t harmed by any of this. Earlier this year, Judge Jerry Blackwell granted the government’s motion to dismiss. We respectfully disagreed with his decision, and so we took advantage of the opportunity to file an amended complaint that laid out in even greater detail the abuses suffered by Dr. Jensen at the hands of the Board. The Board moved to dismiss Dr. Jensen’s case again, and on Aug. 29, we argued the case again before Judge Blackwell. We are hopeful that justice will be done as we await the Court’s decision.
The battle being waged by Dr. Jensen is much larger than himself or his own rights. Licensed professionals across Minnesota and the rest of the country have the same freedoms to criticize our elected officials on matters of public concern as anyone else. The courts agree. As even the federal Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals has written: “outside the doctor-patient relationship, doctors are constitutionally equivalent to soapbox orators and pamphleteers, and their speech receives robust protection under the First Amendment.” Pickup v. Brown, 740 F.3d 1208, 1227-28 (9th Cir. 2014). Dr. Jensen has these rights, yet the Board still claims the right to police speech, and the chilling effect remains to this day. This is an important fight. Along with the Upper Midwest Law Center, I am proud to fight for Dr. Jensen to ensure his rights will be vindicated, even if it means pursuing justice all the way to the United States Supreme Court.
Greg Joseph is lead counsel for Dr. Scott Jensen in Jensen v. Minnesota Board of Medical Practice, et al.
The views and opinions expressed in this commentary are those of the author and do not represent an official position of Alpha News.
