Do No Harm v. Beacon Health System, Inc.

On April 21, 2026, Do No Harm filed a complaint with the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) Office for Civil Rights (OCR) against Beacon Health System for operating a discriminatory student healthcare scholarship program exclusively available to racial minorities.

Priding itself for “a culture of diversity, equity and inclusion,” Beacon Health offers the “Underrepresented in Medicine Scholarship” (URiM) program to fourth-year medical students. Among other benefits, the program provides a training rotation in family medicine and a generous stipend.

However, the scholarship is only offered to individuals of certain racial minorities who Beacon Health presumes have “faced significant socioeconomic disadvantage.” Whites and other disfavored racial groups are unlawfully excluded from the opportunity.

Programs like Beacon Health’s URiM program institute race-based exclusions and illegitimate racial stereotypes, which assert that certain racial groups achieve “diversity” over others and that only certain racial groups face “disadvantage.”

Because Beacon Health receives federal funding, it is subject to Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and Section 1557 of the Affordable Care Act, which prohibit race-based exclusion and stereotyping.