Stock v. Gray et al. [Missouri Board of Pharmacy]

Docket number: 2:22-cv-4104-NKL (W.D. Mo.)

The Hamilton Lincoln Law Institute filed suit on behalf of pharmacist Ashley Stock, challenging a new Missouri law that would prevent pharmacists in the state from communicating with physicians or patients to dispute the effectiveness of ivermectin or hydroxychloroquine for human use as a COVID-19 treatment. On March 22, 2013, the district court granted Stock’s motion to enjoin enforcement of the unconstitutional law.

The law, HB 2149, was signed by Governor Parson on June 7, 2022 and its pharmacist speech ban is scheduled to go into effect in late August. Originally the bill was drafted to deal with the unrelated problem of retaining physical therapists in state. An amendment to that bill then set its sights on the supposed weaponizationation of the Board of Healing Arts and a concern that doctors would face liability for prescribing ivermectin or hydroxychloroquine. Lumped in with this amendment is an express prohibition on pharmacists “contact[ing] the prescribing physician or the patient to dispute the efficacy of ivermectin tablets or hydroxychloroquine sulfate tablets for human use.”

With this restriction, Missouri has overstepped the boundaries set by the First Amendment, and invaded the marketplace of ideas that the Constitution guarantees. The Supreme Court has emphasized time and again how essential professionals’ voices are to the marketplace of ideas, especially “in the fields of medicine and public health, where information can save lives.” Nat’l Institute of Family & Life Advocates v. Becerra, 138 S. Ct. 2361, 2374 (2018). When someone signs up to be a member of a licensed profession, they do not sacrifice their free speech rights along the way.

As long as this law stands, it will serve as a dangerous tool allowing governments to distort the marketplace of ideas, by suppressing any views contrary to its own. The law abridges the truth-seeking function of the First Amendment, which depends upon a free and uninhibited exchange of views. Pharmacists have the right to speak; patients and doctors have the right to hear the pharmacists’ views and to present their own. Missouri has no reason nor power to interfere in such conversations.

On July 22, 2022, Stock filed a motion with the district court asking that enforcement of HB 2149’s pharmacist speech ban be enjoined while the court’s considers Stock’s arguments that the ban is unconstitutional. Missouri responded on August 5, claiming, among other things, that its statute was constitutional because it merely regulated conduct and not speech and that any subject speech was untruthful and unprotected. Five days later, Missouri moved to dismiss Stock’s suit.

On August 17, 2022, Stock filed both her opposition to Missouri’s motion to dismiss her suit and her reply to Missouri’s opposition to her motion for a preliminary injunction. In her filings, Stock addresses Missouri’s misplaced arguments. Namely, HB 2149’s pharmacist speech ban plainly targets speech and not conduct because it solely aims to stop pharmacists from speaking on a single viewpoint on a single topic. And the First Amendment clearly protect the professional and scientific opinions of licensed professionals like Stock.

On March 22, 2023, the district court granted Stock’s motion for preliminary injunction and denied Missouri’s motion to dismiss “because the second sentence of § 338.055.7 infringes the free speech rights of Plaintiff and other Missouri-licensed pharmacists.”

Case Documents