Health Law Advisor

On July 17, 2025, Oregon Governor Tina Kotek signed SB 537, which adds to Oregon’s growing set of workplace violence prevention laws relating to health care. The bill passed the state Senate with an 18-11 vote on June 23, and the House, 37-12, on June 26, during the final days of the legislative session. The new provisions add detailed requirements for health care work sites.

Oregon Governor Tina Kotek has signed SB 951—which, as we noted on June 4, 2025, disrupts historically accepted corporate practice of medicine (CPOM) structures by banning arrangements that are inherent to friendly PC models and placing limitations on Management Service Organizations (MSOs). SB 951 is now Oregon law, with staggered effective dates. 

The new law will be the strictest in the nation when it comes to limiting health care ownership and influence, and it seems certain to affect corporate investment in the state’s medical sector.

Yet in an unusual twist, the Oregon legislature is now poised to pass related legislation, HB 3410A, that would amend portions of SB 951 in the course of the same legislative session.

SB 951, which bolsters existing Oregon law prohibiting the corporate practice of medicine (CPOM), passed the state House of Representatives on May 28 and now awaits the signature of Governor Tina Kotek.

As EBG noted in a recent blog, the majority of states have some form of CPOM restriction. Oregon’s doctrine stretches back to 1947, when the state supreme court in State ex. rel. Sisemore v. Standard Optical Co. of Or. banned corporations from owning medical practices, practicing medicine, or employing physicians.^[1]

Since then, however, Oregon has sought to strengthen its CPOM rules legislatively, as entities have “sought to circumvent the ban through complex ownership structures, contracting practices, and other means,” as SB 951 states.

In the last couple of months, ballot initiatives have significantly affected health policy and the health industry as a whole. Constituents are becoming more involved in policy matters that have traditionally been left to elected officials in state legislatures. On January 25, 2018, Oregon held a special election for a ballot initiative that asked whether Oregonians would support funding the state Medicaid program by taxing health plans and hospitals. The ballot initiative passed with a margin of 62 percent of voters supporting the measure. The measure proposed a 1.5 percent ...

The intersection of employment and marijuana laws has just gotten cloudier, thanks to a recent decision by the Rhode Island Superior Court interpreting that state’s medical marijuana and discrimination laws. In Callaghan v. Darlington Fabrics Corporation, the court broke with the majority of courts in other states in holding that an employer’s enforcement of its neutral drug testing policy to deny employment to an applicant because she held a medical marijuana card violated the anti-discrimination provisions of the state medical marijuana law.

Background

Plaintiff ...