Had the judge not thrown out this case, she'd have another feather in her cap, another headline for the website: "Kim Ogg puts nepotistic, racist, embezzling doctor behind bars!" Doesn't need to be honest, just needs to sound good.
The official statements of the medical associations in the article state: “It is difficult to understand any justification for charging any well-intentioned physician in this situation with a criminal offense.” As there is clearly no legal justification, the only justification in sight is progressive identity politics attacking a "white-adjacent" physician.
Basically, the more categories of historically marginalized people groups an individual belongs to, the more acceptable that person is, the more of a voice they’re allowed to have, and the more laudable it is to favor that person (and the more unacceptable it is to fail to favor that person regardless of the circumstances).
This doctor apparently “failed” to favor the right people. The progressive calculus around the case is all about “who”, and it intentionally excludes what, when, where, why, or how.
The problem she had with his decision was that he was “favoring” certain people in an unfair and illegal way — a conclusion that could only be reached by disregarding every question about the incident except “who”. That approach finds its origin in modern progressivism, where the only truth that matters is “who”.
The DA (she) charged the pharmacist (him), because he favored non-blacks. What is the "who" refer to? What's modern progressivism? What's its origin?
It’s actually a strategy for leaders to want the underlings to stick their neck out, so that they can be sacrificed as a scapegoat when convenient.
(in these bureaurocratic situations, obviously I’m not talking about a leader asking people to murder others and them not being responsible for that).
In this specific case; where's the prosecutorial discretion? If it's coming down from on high, why aren't their names in this article?
I don't know that that's a useful question in this context. Bureaucracies function in intensely amoral ways. Even ones with a moral mission. You can embarrass the leadership with moral judgments, and that will steer things for at least as long as public scrutiny maintains its attention span. Internally, though, the rules look more like game theory, and the bureaucracy will naturally tend to reject anyone who doesn't want to play the game.
> what's difference that makes 'just following orders' suddenly not apply?
I don’t know, but this situation isn’t it in my opinion. It can be fixed with a flick of a pen (or email) by a higher up.