In July 2025, a claim (archived) circulated online that the Medical Board of Australia suspended the medical license of Dr. Jereth Kok over social media posts expressing "Christian views" that a tribunal in Victoria found amounted to professional misconduct.
One X user wrote:
An Aussie doctor has been found guilty of professional misconduct. Not for harming patients. But for posting Christian views, including memes & satire from @TheBabylonBee, on social media. Yes, that can now cost you your medical licence in Australia. Meet Dr Jereth Kok
The claim also circulated on Facebook (archived), Instagram (archived), Bluesky (archived) and Reddit (archived).
The broad details in the claim — that Kok's social media posts caused the suspension of his medical license and that a tribunal in Victoria, Australia, found the posts amounted to professional misconduct — were true. Kok's case was ongoing at the time of this writing.
The Medical Board of Australia (MBA) suspended Kok's medical license in 2019 after complaints about his social media posts on topics including abortion, medical treatment of gender dysphoria and the mental health of transgender people and other LGBTQ+ individuals that the board alleged were "denigrating" and "demeaning."
Kok appealed the MBA's decision shortly after,
After Kok's failed appeal, the MBA referred his case to VCAT. The board does this when it believes a practitioner has engaged in professional misconduct, and the tribunal decides whether that's true and what the consequences will be.
Following the MBA's referral, the VCAT found on July 22, 2025, that 54 of Kok's social media posts between 2010 and 2021 amounted to professional misconduct. The case, despite this finding, was ongoing at the time of this writing, as the Tribunal had not issued final orders or said what the consequences of its findings will be. Instead, it asked the parties to submit potential dates for a further hearing in March 2026.
Human Rights Law Alliance (HRLA), the law firm representing Kok, said on July 25, 2025, that it was "carefully considering the prospects of
According to its July 22, 2025, findings, the VCAT reviewed 85 of Kok's posts that the MBA alleged "denigrated, demeaned or slurred" LGBTQ+ people and doctors who provided abortions, recognized or treated gender dysphoria and believed people who identified as transgender did not suffer from mental health conditions.
The MBA also alleged that Kok's posts "expressed sentiments of violence and/or made derogatory statements" against doctors who provided abortion treatment and racial and religious groups.
In the case that yielded the July 22 findings, the MBA also alleged that Kok's more recent posts "denigrated, demeaned and/or slurred persons that accepted and/or considered it right to follow COVID-19 public health orders" and "drew on and/or legitimised antivaccination or vaccine hesitancy rhetoric and/or contained misleading information regarding vaccines" during the COVID-19 pandemic.
The VCAT considered 85 of Kok's posts submitted by the MBA. It found that 54 of them supported "at least some of the aspects of the allegation" of professional misconduct made by the MBA. Hence, the VCAT wrote, "the Tribunal is comfortably satisfied that the conduct described in Allegation 1 has been proven."
Australian media reported examples of several of Kok's posts that the VCAT found amounted to professional misconduct, including posts that branded doctors who carried out abortions or treated gender dysphoria as "butchers" or "crooks."
Kok claimed some posts were meant in a satirical nature, including one where he wrote "we" should colonize "primitive yellow people and black people" if they didn't "progress." The VCAT found this to be among the 54 posts that satisfied the MBA's allegation of professional misconduct.
Out of the 85 posts, the VCAT found that 30 did not comfortably satisfy the MBA's allegation.
HRLA, representing Kok, wrote on July 25 that the VCAT's decision was "deeply disappointing for Dr Kok and sets a concerning precedent for freedom of speech in Australia, particularly for professionals who hold Christian or conservative beliefs."
It said VCAT had found Kok guilty of professional misconduct "not for any clinical failing, but for expressing his deeply held views on social media."
Kok's medical license remained suspended at the time of this writing according to the Australian Health Practitioner Regulation Agency's online register.