Dr Richard Fox MD

California attorney and paediatrician Dr. Richard Fox filed a lawsuit against the State of California, the Federal Centre for Disease Control, and two California school districts late last month.

State Public Health Officer/California Department of Public Health Director Dr. Tomás Aragón; California Department of Education/State Superintendent of Public Instruction Tony Thurmond; Medical Board of California Executive Director Reji Varghese; California Attorney General Rob Bonta; U.S. Centre for Disease Control and Prevention Director Mandy Cohen; Brentwood Union School District Superintendent Dana Eaton; and Gilroy Unified School District Superintendent Alisha Munshi are named as defendants in that complaint.

Dr. Fox is representing Brave and Free Santa Cruz, a freedom advocacy group; six unnamed minor plaintiffs and their parents; plus Dr. Douglas Hulstedt, a Monterey paediatrician.

In the complaint Dr. Fox asserts that the state’s school immunization requirements are unconstitutional under the First and Fourteenth Amendments.

The complaint also asserts that special education students (those with Individualized Educational Plans) are legally exempt from those requirements.

Furthermore, the complaint asserts that Dr. Hulstedt had his medical licence revoked for not going along with those requirements. Dr. Hulstedt’s First Amendment rights were infringed upon and, according to the complaint, his medical licence should therefore be reinstated.

Paragraph 315 is the cornerstone of this complaint.

That paragraph reads: “Under our Declaration of Independence, our government ‘derives [its] just powers from the consent of the governed.’ This only works when that consent is informed consent, both as to public affairs as well as personal affairs, such as medical care. Denial of informed consent for medical care is an infringement of both our First Amendment right to speak and hear freely and our Fourteenth Amendment right to give or withhold consent for medical treatment.”

The 154-page complaint was filed on August 26, 2024, with the U.S. District Court, Eastern District of California.

Dr. Fox was conferred a Juris Doctor Degree from Santa Clara University, Law School, Santa Clara, in 2009. He has been a member of the California State Bar since 2012.

Dr. Fox earned a Bachelor of Arts Degree in economics from Michigan State University, East Lansing in 1968. He was conferred a Doctor of Medicine from the University of Minnesota Medical School in Minneapolis in 1975. He completed his postdoctoral training residency at the University of Minnesota Hospitals in 1978.

Possessing more than 30 years of medical teaching experience, Dr. Fox served as an Instructor and Assistant Professor of paediatrics at the University of Colorado in Denver for two years. He was also appointed Assistant Professor at Harvard Medical School’s Department of Paediatrics. Furthermore, he taught at Denver’s National Jewish Hospital, Boston’s Children’s Hospital, San Jose’s Good Samaritan Hospital and Los Gatos’ Community Hospital during his medical practising and teaching career.

In addition to his more than three decades of teaching, Dr. Fox published 24 medical research papers in peer-reviewed journals. He has also authored numerous medical abstracts and presentations.

Dr. Fox has belonged to several medical organizations, and he has received numerous awards and honours over the past four decades.