The idea that past racism can be undone with more racism is ludicrous.  Affirmative action, established in the 1960s, emphasized equality of opportunity.  But it has transmogrified — through the politics of DEI, sexual orientation, and gender identity — into a new form of racism emphasizing equality of outcome.

Unconstitutional quotas deny college admissions and government jobs to whites and non-black, non-Latino, non-Native groups.  The worst is the recent invasion of healthcare by DEI-driven policies.  Belonging to a DEI-privileged group outweighs need.  White patients may have to wait longer than blacks or Hispanics for cardiac care or kidney transplants.  All in the name of “health equity” and righting past wrongs done to those groups.

This column will look at four recent lawsuits — among the many — that have been brought against such policies.  It will also show how, over the last few years, a retribution-focused movement to embed racial preferences in medical treatment has gained traction in the healthcare industry.

The first case is from Montana, where in 1991, the 52nd legislature enacted and codified House Bill 424 (originally House Joint Resolution 28) as Montana § 2-15-108, MCA.  The law aimed to “take positive action to attain gender balance and proportional representation of minorities” in state boards, commissions, committees, and councils.  The alleged cause of the imbalance was “bias.”

In September 2023, two vacancies opened for the 12-member Board of Medical Examiners, but the governor has been unable to make appointments since the appointments must adhere to DEI.  Do No Harm, an organization representing physicians and healthcare workers countering DEI in medicine, has filed a suit in U.S. District Court for the District of Montana (Helena Division), saying Montana § 2-15-108 violates the equal protection clause of the 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.

The DNH lawsuit says one of its members (identified as Member A) has 31 years’ practice as a dermatologist, is qualified for the post, and is willing to serve — but gender and race mandates stand in the way of her appointment.  The Pacific Legal Foundation (PLF) is representing DNH pro bono.

The PLF has also filed a similar case on behalf of DNH in Louisiana.  Here, the lawsuit challenges the state’s La. Statute § 37: 1263 (B) as violative of the equal protection clause.  The statute governs appointments to the state’s 10-member medical board.  Of its eight subsections, four say “every other member appointed” under those provisions shall belong to a minority and nothing therein precludes consecutive appointments of minority members.

DNH says it has members qualified and willing to serve as physician and consumer members of the board, but the statute prevents their appointment.  Louisiana has similar quotas for other boards and commissions, such as those for barbers, optometry examiners, embalmers, and funeral directors.

The third case, filed on March 12 this year, is a federal lawsuit against the City of San Diego.  The city’s housing commission has a loan program to assist first-time home buyers who are black, indigenous, or people of color (BIPOC).  It offers $40,000 for down payment and closing costs.  The Californians for Equal Rights Foundation, represented by PLF, has challenged the program as unconstitutional.  For the Constitution bars discrimination based on race or color — no matter what race or color.

The fourth lawsuit, in which a battle was won, was from Arkansas.  It related to appointment to the state’s Social Work Licensing Board.  In June 2022, Stephen Haile, a devoted foster care parent with over 300 home placements and extensive experience in child custody issues, sought appointment to the board as a representative of the elderly.  Haile was excluded from consideration as he is white and the board is required to have at least two black members.

Represented by PLF, he challenged Arkansas’s quota law in January 2023.  But by March that year, the state legislature abolished the law, and Governor Sarah Huckabee Sanders signed legislation to favor board appointments based solely on individual qualifications.  Haile then withdrew his lawsuit.

Such quota systems are rampant now.  Researchers for the PLF found that at least 25 states have gender or race quotas for public board membership.  Fifteen states have race- or sex-conscious eligibility mandates for nearly every public board.  Public Service Denied, a PLF report, details how widespread these discriminatory practices are.  It lists sixty-three race- and sex-conscious mandates.

Meanwhile, the National Academy for State Health Policy (NASHP), buttressed by the federal Executive Order 13985 of 2021, is working to infect healthcare with DEI ideologies.  Training “leaders of color,” increasing BIPOC participation in the healthcare workforce, mandating diversity training in medical settings — these are the priorities on which it focuses.

In parallel, the Association of American Medical Colleges has required member colleges to implement DEI standards.  A move is also afoot to inject race politics into the Hippocratic Oath by rewording or replacing it. The American Medical Association, too, has adopted an “anti-racism” orientation.

The ostensible aim of such initiatives is to eliminate disparities in quality of, and access to, healthcare.  The trouble, though, is that requiring doctors and other medical professionals to take time off from clinical responsibilities to prioritize racial impact makes no sense.  Also, alleged systemic racism has nothing to do with illness, for which metabolic and behavioral risk factors carry more weight.

This movement, away from unbiased, need-based care to downright favoring of certain races, is unethical.  Sometimes, it is taken to foolish extremes: WhiteCoats4BlackLives (WC4BL), for example, said that “policing is incompatible with health” and persuaded hundreds of state and local governments to declare racism a public health issue.  But sadly, the effects of DEI ideology are in evidence in many areas of public health and healthcare.

It was seen, most egregiously perhaps, during the COVID pandemic, when 1,200 medical professionals signed an open letter saying they “do not condemn” riots organized by Black Lives Matter as risky, prioritizing “opposition to racism as vital to public health.”  When vaccines became available, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) said black senior citizens were the highest risk group and concluded that race should be prioritized over age!

The Brigham and Women’s Hospital, Boston, has a program that gives preference to black and Latino patients with heart failure, ostensibly to make up for past less attentive care.  However, the program is based on a flawed 2019 study (itself based on others) that claimed to demonstrate “the presence of structural racism in admission service for heart failure patients.”

A similar policy prioritizing DEI-privileged groups has delayed the treatment of more than 10 million non-black nephrology patients, some of whom require kidney transplants.  A new qualifications system adopted by the United Network for Organ Sharing (UNOS), a non-profit managing organ transplants in the U.S., prioritizes black patients for treatment.

Whether it is appointments to boards, medical care, college admissions, jobs or other benefits, unfair considerations of race now predominate.  Policies discriminating against whites and other groups — Asians, for example — are falsely hailed as reparative for targeted minorities.

The process began in the 1960s, with the slow abandonment of the constitutional ideal forbidding any form of racial distinction.  Then, DEI and social justice, and later, sexual orientation (in 1998) and gender identity (in 2014), became pervasive.  This new racism violates the basic tenets of our constitutional republic.  It should not be allowed to stand.

Image: Free image, Pixabay license, no attribution required.