The Firearm Owners' Privacy Act (often abbreviated FOPA) is a law passed by the Florida Legislature in 2011 in response to concerns raised by Floridians whose physicians asked them about gun ownership.
[2][3] The law also prevents physicians from denying care to patients if they do not answer questions about guns.
[3][5] On June 29, 2012, United States District Court for the Southern District of Florida judge Marcia G. Cooke issued a permanent injunction against FOPA on the basis that it unduly burdened physicians' right to free speech.
In 2014, in Wollschlaeger v. Governor of Florida, a three-judge panel on the Eleventh Circuit reversed Cooke's injunction; the author of the ruling wrote that "the practice of good medicine does not require interrogation about irrelevant, private matters."
[1][3] On February 16, 2017, the en banc Eleventh Circuit, issuing two majority opinions, ruled that three of the law's four provisions—the anti-harassment, record-keeping, and inquiry provisions—violate the First Amendment.