Do No Harm v. Lee II

Tennessee medical practitioners are regulated by the Tennessee Board of Medical Examiners, while the state’s Board of Chiropractic Examiners oversees chiropractors.

A requirement of both boards, however, has nothing to do with medicine or chiropractic care, and everything to do with race. State law forces the governor to consider race when deciding who can serve on these boards.

Specifically, the governor must appoint at least one African American to the medical board, and one racial minority to the chiropractic board.

Represented by Pacific Legal Foundation, Do No Harm is fighting back. Its federal lawsuit against Tennessee Governor Bill Lee challenges Tennessee’s racial quotas for chiropractor and medical board membership as violating the Constitution’s equal protection guarantee. Victory would ensure that all candidates can compete equally for any state advisory board, regardless of race.

It’s wrong for the government to make assumptions about people’s experiences and qualifications based on arbitrary and offensive assumptions about race. And it’s unconstitutional.

No government official should use an individual’s race or ethnicity to determine who gets the opportunity to serve the public. Treating people differently on the basis of race violates the very notion of equality before the law. People should be treated as individuals, not as members of a group they did not choose.