After a career making history in college and pro basketball, John Stockton is taking his name, and his game, to a different kind of court.
The former Utah Jazz point guard, NBA Hall of Famer and current podcast host is leading a federal lawsuit filed against the state of Washington attorney general’s office and the state’s medical commission over rules adopted for the COVID pandemic that silence doctors who challenge “the mainstream media narrative.”
And the Spokane, Washington, native and former hometown hero at Gonzaga University is as aggressive on the issue as he ever was in the paint.
In an interview Saturday on “Fox First,” Stockton and attorney Rick Jaffe said the rules the state of Washington adopted in 2021 are an assault on American freedoms and the freedom of science.
And the goal of the lawsuit is clear. “I think it’s pretty simple. It’s freedom,” Stockton said. “Even though we talk about medical freedom and things, it’s freedom and freedom to speak. It’s our First Amendment.”
Here’s hoping Americans never forget how “freedom” was pretty much the last thing too many local, state and federal officials were concerned with during the depths of the coronavirus mania. (Unless it was freedom to riot.)
In September 2021, at a time when sanity was returning to some — Republican-led — parts of the country, the Washington State Medical Commission issued a news release announcing it had voted unanimously to adopt a statement on what it called “COVID-19 Misinformation.”
The statement followed a July 2021 announcement from the Federation of State Medical Boards — a national umbrella group — that declared “Physicians who generate and spread COVID-19 vaccine misinformation or disinformation are risking disciplinary action by state medical boards, including the suspension or revocation of their medical license.”
Should officials who tried to fire and ruin COVID dissenters be treated exactly the same way?
Of course, what’s “disinformation” or “misinformation” when it comes to COVID has always been more a matter of opinion than actual fact, and it’s changed with the times.
At one point, the so-called “lab leak theory” — that the COVID-19 pandemic was started at the Wuhan Institute of Virology in Wuhan, China, was considered “disinformation.” In 2023 both the FBI and the Department of Energy endorsed it as the most likely origin of the disease — albeit in the latter’s case with a derrier-covering and politically useful caveat of “low confidence.”
Even Dr. Anthony Fauci, the former director of the National Institute of Allergies and Infectious Diseases, has acknowledged that social distancing guidelines about individuals staying six feet apart was essentially made up.
Yet anyone who questioned the establishment position, whether on the origins of the disease, treatments or the efficacy of vaccines in preventing transmission of the disease (they don’t, as a study in the journal The Lancet noted) no matter what MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow might claim.
In fact, one of Stockton’s attorneys, Democratic Party scion and independent presidential contender Robert F. Kennedy, makes no bones about that.
Yet in the worst days of the pandemic, anyone in public or semi-public life who uttered words dissenting from the establishment view risked the persecution of social and professional ostracism and — in Washington state, according to Stockton’s lawsuit — the loss of a professional license.
“The Washington Medical Commission I think is an outlier in most states,” Stockton attorney Rick Jaffe told Fox News’ Todd Piro.
“I don’t think there’s any court case that’s ever held that a professional can be silenced in terms of his speech to the public.”
Stockton has a history of outspoken dissent when it comes to COVID. In 2022, the man who is the most storied name in the storied history of Gonzaga University basketball (besides the NBA Hall of Fame, he’s also a member of the National Collegiate Basketball Hall of Fame) had his season tickets to Gonzaga basketball games suspended over his opposition to mask mandates.
“This isn’t the first time Stockton has taken a defiant stance on COVID-19 restrictions,” the Spokane Spokesman-Review reported March 11. “The Gonzaga University alum was once suspended from attending basketball games at his alma mater after he refused to wear a face mask.”
And as the host of the podcast “Voices for Medical Freedom,” he’s been taking public positions on policies most Americans probably never give a second thought to.
Now, he’s taking the battle to court, in a federal lawsuit that could open plenty of eyes about the treatment the medical and political establishment have meted out since the COVID pandemic to any who offer dissenting views.
It’s a more important battle than Stockton ever waged on the basketball court. And, fortunately, he’s getting support.
“I’ve received calls from people and doctors that I haven’t spoken to in quite a while, and they’re just so grateful,” he told Piro. “They’re grateful that somebody is stepping up that has a voice.”
The rest of the country should be grateful, too.
