California Doctor Sued for Using Patients’ Records to Push Congressional Campaign

When Dr. Sonia Devgan‑Kacker announced in January that she’d run as a Democrat for the 26th‑district seat in California, she probably didn’t expect her campaign to end up in a courtroom.

Instead, a former patient named Sean Rose says the doctor’s urgent‑care clinic – Westlake Village Urgent Care – used his phone number – and the numbers of dozens of other former patients – to blast a political advertisement straight to their mobiles.

According to the complaint, Rose received a text in May 2026 that started with a bold “paid political ad” for “Dr. Sonia,” complete with her portrait and a list of credentials. The message then warned, “the clinic will be open and operating under normal business hours during the campaign,” before looping back to repeat her qualifications and drop a link to the campaign website. The final line was a reminder to vote on June 2.

What’s odd, Rose argues, is that the phone number listed for the ad wasn’t the clinic’s office line at all – it was the campaign’s hotline. In other words, the text came from a political operation, not from the health‑care provider that originally held his contact info.

When Rose fired off an email to Westlake Village Urgent Care asking why a clinic‑related message would be sent by a congressional campaign, the clinic replied that his number was on file because he’d been a patient “a few years ago” and that the text was part of a blanket blast to all previous patients.

The clinic added that a third‑party service had handled the mass‑texting. Later that same day, a follow‑up email tried to soften the explanation, claiming the outreach was geographically targeted to the local community and not intended to single out anyone because they’d been patients.

Rose says that excuse doesn’t hold water. He lives now in the 29th district, not the 26th, so if the campaign were using only public voter rolls, his number shouldn’t have been in the mix. The lawsuit claims the campaign pulled his information directly from the clinic’s patient records, which is prohibited under the California Confidentiality of Medical Records Act.

That law is crystal clear: health‑care providers may not disclose a patient’s medical information without explicit authorization. Rose is asking the court for statutory and punitive damages, asserting that the clinic’s actions – and the campaign’s use of that data – broke the rule.

Dr. Devgan‑Kacker’s campaign never made it past the June primary, but the legal battle is just getting started. When the Post reached out for comment, the doctor’s team declined to speak.

Whether the case will end in a hefty judgment or a quiet settlement remains to be seen, but it does raise a lingering question for any physician with political ambitions: where do you draw the line between serving patients and courting voters?