Utah Knew Its Race-Based COVID Care Was Illegal

The more we learn about state plans to ration medical care based on race, the more concerning it gets. A case in point is Utah. New reports prove the state knew that race-based COVID care was illegal under federal law, but it moved ahead with this discriminatory policy anyway.

Utah started heading toward race-based care after November 2020. That’s when the state’s Department of Health and Human Services tasked a “Crisis Standards of Care” workgroup with developing a plan to dole out limited supplies of COVID treatments. By February of 2021, the workgroup urged the state to make race a potentially decisive factor in determining who would get monoclonal antibodies. Under the plan, non-white patients would get extra points toward qualifying for access to these treatments.

This proposal immediately raised concerns from legal experts consulted by the state. Newly-unearthed emails show a local law professor warning the workgroup that “the use of non-white race really set off alarm bells” in light of “anti-discrimination law.” Another local law professor said the “consensus among legal academics… seems to be that it does violate federal law.”

Remarkably, the state pressed on with implementing race-based COVID care. The good news is that the threat of a lawsuit in January of this year finally caused Utah to drop the idea. But the bad news is that it ever considered discriminatory care to begin with – and stuck with the idea despite repeated and clear warnings that it was illegal. Apparently not even federal law will stop woke activists from demanding their way in healthcare.