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DeWine’s veto of the health-related language comes as Republican President-elect Donald Trump anti-vaccine activist Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to head the nation’s health agencies and with still festering in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic.

DeWine said in a veto message that the medical oversight language added to a the bill could have had "devastating and deadly consequences for patient health.”

“Ohio’s medical licensing boards exist to protect patients and the public from bad actors in the medical field,” he wrote. He said health professionals who give harmful medical care shouldn't get a “legal shield” to avoid accountability by "saying there was a difference of ‘medical opinion.’”

Ohio lawmakers passed at around 2 a.m. on the final night of their lame duck session last month. That was after they turned it into a “Christmas tree bill,” loaded with controversial items from other pending legislation. DeWine also vetoed to other provisions of the 325-page bill that would have established new ethics law exemptions and dealt with clerks of court.

The Ohio Ethics Commission praised his veto of the ethics exemptions, which Executive Director Paul Nick said in a statement “would have significantly weakened” the state's ethics law by allowing mayors and other executive officers to have interests in public contracts held by public agencies they serve.

Still, the medical freedom section would arguably have had the most sweeping impact. It called for prohibiting the Ohio Department of Health and the state’s pharmacy and medical boards from disciplining any pharmacist or other licensed health care professional for “publicly or privately expressing a medical opinion that does not align” with the “opinions” of any state, county or city health authority.

DeWine nonetheless left in place a provision in the bill that declares Ohio outside the jurisdiction of the World Health Organization, the U.N.'s health agency.

DeWine was among three Republican governors who did not sign onto that their 24 GOP colleagues sent to the Biden administration in May opposing the WHO’s draft proposal for responding to the next worldwide pandemic. They argued the “pandemic treaty” would strip governors of their health authority and give the WHO unprecedented powers on U.S. soil. Those claims were debunked, but a backlash of various sorts the global deal.

Ohio Advocates for Medical Freedom, a nonpartisan group that's been working for years to advance limiting vaccine mandates imposed by businesses, health care providers and governments, backed the vetoed medical free speech provision.

Its campaign coincided with DeWine during the pandemic that he said would have handicapped the state’s ability to issue emergency health orders. Lawmakers failed to override his first veto, but they managed to restore a weaker version of the law .

The medical freedom group has downplayed any role that the case of Sherri Tenpenny played in driving the latest medical free speech proposal.

Tenpenny, an Ohio osteopathic doctor, drew national attention when video of her June 2021 testimony before state legislators that COVID-19 vaccines made people magnetic was posted to the internet. She suggested that vaccines against the coronavirus might be making people “interface” with cell towers and interfering with women’s menstrual cycles.

The state medical board, which regulates physicians and can discipline them for making false or deceptive medical statements, launched an inquiry into the matter after receiving some 350 complaints. The panel suspended Tenpenny's medical license in 2023 after she refused to cooperate, including declining to meet with investigators, answer written questions or sit for a deposition.

Tenpenny has since agreed to pay a $3,000 fine and cooperate with investigators. earlier this year.