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Do No Harm Submits Amicus Brief Urging Supreme Court to Take Up Case and Reject Any First Amendment Right to Racially Discriminate

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Today, Do No Harm, Students for Fair Admissions, and the American Alliance for Equal Rights filed an amicus brief in the United States Supreme Court in support of a lawsuit challenging the New Jersey State Bar Association’s discriminatory set asides. The case raises an important issue: whether the First Amendment creates a general right to racially discriminate.

The brief urges the Court to grant certiorari in Saadeh v. New Jersey State Bar Association, a case concerning the New Jersey State Bar Association’s racial preference system employed when filling board seats. The bar association, claiming that such preferences are necessary for it to advocate its DEI goals, reserves these seats for lawyers who are “diverse” or from “underrepresented” groups, including, “Black/African American,” “Hispanic/Latino/a/x,” “Asian/Pacific American,” “LGBTQ+,” and “women.”

In October 2021, Rajeh Saadeh, the plaintiff and petitioner in the case, sued the bar association over this quota system, arguing that it violates New Jersey’s antidiscrimination laws.

Though the trial court ruled that the bar association’s quotas were illegal under state law, New Jersey’s appellate court reversed that decision based solely on the First Amendment. According to the state appellate court, forcing the bar association to end such racial preferences would violate the association’s First Amendment rights because it would “significantly burden the expression of its views”—namely the bar association’s “ability to advocate the value of diversity and inclusivity.”

In other words, the court accepted the theory that New Jersey’s bar association had a First Amendment right to racially discriminate. The New Jersey Supreme Court then denied Saadeh’s petition for certiorari.

Do No Harm’s brief explains why this theory is bogus and why it is imperative for the United States Supreme Court to take up this case.

First, the brief highlights numerous examples of cases, including Do No Harm cases, in which defendants accused of illegal racial discrimination have attempted to mount a constitutional Free Speech defense, demonstrating a growing need for the Court to make clear that there is no First Amendment right to racially discriminate.

Then, the brief explains why the logic of a purported First Amendment right to racially discriminate falls apart. Essentially, there is a difference between expressing beliefs and practicing them. The First Amendment protects expression; but antidiscrimination laws forbid racial exclusion and discriminatory practices.

As the brief further explains: “The Free Speech Clause theory” recognized by the New Jersey appellate court and advanced in rising numbers of cases across the country is “not merely novel” but “also incompatible with decades of [Supreme] Court[] precedent and the decisions of most other courts.” In addition, the theory has “no logical stopping point” given that “every entity that discriminates could claim the same ‘expressive’ interest in the bare act of discrimination.”

“The ‘expression’ supposedly found in DEI programs—at bottom, the economic or social advancement of certain racial groups and the exclusion of others—merely restates the fact of race discrimination. Allowing that ‘expression’ to serve as the basis for evading antidiscrimination laws would nullify those laws, for every entity that discriminates could claim the same interest in conveying support for such discrimination.”

Do No Harm urges the Court to grant certiorari.

As defendants scramble to keep unlawful DEI policies in play, many now regularly seek to evade racial nondiscrimination laws and Supreme Court precedent through a purported First Amendment right to discriminate as their “expression.” It is imperative that the Court firmly decide the obvious: DEI activists cannot rely on the First Amendment to racially discriminate.

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Do No Harm Proposes CDC Adopt New Medical Diagnosis Codes for Gender Transition and Detransition

SALT LAKE CITY, UTAH; March 17, 2026 – Today, Kurt Miceli, MD, Do No Harm’s Chief Medical Officer, will present to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) about the need for new medical diagnosis codes (known as ICD-10 codes) for gender transition and detransition.

“Refining the medical diagnosis codes for gender transition and detransition is urgently needed. Currently, the lack of a specific code for detransition makes these individuals effectively invisible to the healthcare system, obscuring their medical needs and limiting real-world research, follow‑up care, and outcome monitoring that responsible practice requires,” said Kurt Miceli, MD, Chief Medical Officer at Do No Harm. “The new diagnosis codes we’re proposing would help generate valuable research data, support evidence-based health standards, and enhance patient care. We commend the CDC for taking important steps toward this goal by accepting for October implementation the code we introduced at the last ICD-10 meeting: gender identity disorder in remission, or desistance. We encourage the agency to adopt our newly proposed codes so that we can further improve the quality of research and care for those suffering from gender dysphoria.”

The CDC meeting will begin at 9:00 a.m. ET. Click here for the agenda and livestream.

Why new codes are needed:

  • To more accurately document an individual’s clinical state to support the appropriate delivery of care
  • To provide clinical data that will support and improve research, quality, and standards of care
  • To inform public health needs in this evolving area of medicine
  • To improve clinician-to-clinician communication within the medical record
  • To give visibility to patients facing these clinical conditions

Do No Harm’s proposed codes aim to more precisely capture the various aspects of gender transition, distinguish those aspects from disorders of sex development, and make sure detransitioners are fully visible to the healthcare system.

These codes include:

  • Personal history of social gender transition
  • Personal history of medical gender transition
  • Personal history of surgical gender transition
  • Personal history of intersex surgery
  • Personal history of unspecified gender transition
  • Personal history of gender detransition

Do No Harm, established in April 2022, has rapidly gained recognition and made significant strides in its mission to safeguard healthcare from ideological threats. It has over 50,000 members, including doctors, nurses, physicians, and concerned citizens across all 50 states and 14 countries.

 

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A Woke Gamble in Medicine?

Academic Medicine, the flagship journal of Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC) recently published an article advocating for a lottery-based residency match system to replace the current match system that, in the authors’ words, emphasize “a narrow set of comparative achievements—standardized test performance, publication counts, and honor society memberships.”

The article, written by several authors including the Associate Dean for Admissions at Stanford University School of Medicine, starts out with the premise that this more merit-oriented approach is actually harmful to medical education.

Instead, the authors argue that residency programs should adopt a “modified lottery” system in which applicants who are deemed “qualified” by their medical schools are assigned, through an algorithm, to interview with certain residency programs.

The crux of the argument is as follows:

“We argue that the current residency selection process must be upended to achieve several important aims: facilitating the implementation of [competency-based medical education], promoting a growth mindset among students, eliminating the use of metrics that foster harmful bias, ensuring optimal preparation for patient care, and improving equality within the selection process.”

Notice the sections on “bias” and “equality.”

And here’s the kicker: the authors argue that this process should include diversity objectives so that residency programs can achieve their DEI goals.

“Inclusion of diversity-related programmatic outcomes in the modified lottery process could help align applicants and programs with similar interests in caring for diverse patient populations, advancing health equity, or promoting inclusive practices,” the authors write.

To be clear, it is not the lottery itself that is the issue. Indeed, Do No Harm’s founder Dr. Stanley Goldfarb explained in National Review how, in the context of medical school admissions, instituting a lottery system past a certain threshold of academic achievement would prevent racial preferences in admissions while ensuring that medical schools preserve merit.

Each medical school should announce a minimum MCAT score and undergraduate GPA  necessary for admission, then institute a lottery system for applicants who clear those bars. This approach would not only end racial discrimination overnight — it would also strongly incentivize medical schools to admit the best-qualified students.

Instead, it is the article’s premise that more merit-oriented methods of selection should be devalued, and that the lottery process should be used to achieve DEI goals, that is disturbing. It’s a system in which “good enough” replaces “the best” for selecting into the most competitive training programs.

The authors give the game away elsewhere in the paper, arguing that more achievement-oriented metrics of residency selection “confer demonstrable bias (e.g. racial, ethnic, gender, and/or socioeconomic), potentially limiting the entrance of applicants with identities considered underrepresented in medicine into residency positions.”

How, exactly, merit-based metrics of selection confer bias while consideration of diversity objectives does not is anyone’s guess.

Additionally, the article is remarkably light on details as to what counts as a qualified applicant, instead calling for widespread adoption of a standardized “programmatic assessment.”

“In order for a modified lottery for interviews to be successful, this would require UME institutions to agree upon a set of outcomes to determine qualification and develop rigorous programmatic assessment to ensure those outcomes are met,” the authors write.

But apparently the “standardized test performance, publication counts, and honor society memberships” are excluded from the qualification discussion? This doesn’t make much sense.

In short, the article’s proposal would indeed upend residency selection, but make it much less fair. Objective measures of academic excellence would be devalued, and non-academic considerations would be promoted.

We shouldn’t gamble on the future of medicine like this.

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Detransitioners Are Righting Medicine’s Wrongs

Lobotomies and pediatric gender interventions have a lot in common. Both treatments were developed to address forms of psychological distress, have resulted in patient harm, and sparked concerns surrounding informed consent from a vulnerable population.

But the medical community abandoned lobotomies without legal restrictions, while pediatric gender interventions are being wrestled away from “gender-affirming” clinicians by twenty-seven state bans, multiple federal executive orders and the threat of Medicare and Medicaid defunding.

Despite the similarities, the two interventions have one important difference: pediatric gender interventions are rooted in ideology while lobotomies were not. The medical establishment was able to self-regulate and stop performing lobotomies without legal prohibitions after an increasing number of patients suffered poor outcomes, likely because doctors were not ideologically invested in the procedures. Compelling clinicians to alter a practice motivated by deeply-held beliefs rather than objective evidence has proven to be difficult. But the adverse complications are becoming too obvious to ignore.

A growing population of patients harmed by pediatric gender interventions are redirecting medicine away from ideology and back to objective facts. Detransitioners who were deemed by their clinicians to be transgender and subsequently underwent irreversible procedures before coming to realize that their gender distress was due to something else are the truth serum restoring medical integrity. Legal prohibitions, restrictions in funding, and now a two million dollar judgement in favor of a harmed patient are the inevitable result of belief-directed medicine that failed to right itself.

Shaking clinicians out of their transgender fever dream has been challenging. Queer theory believers unquestioningly affirm children’s musings of gender nonconformity, sometimes leading to life-altering gender interventions. They assert gender is a social construct untethered to biological sex. Children who struggle with gender distress are treated as if they are expressing a distinct and authentic identity — despite its departure from biological reality — and one that must be affirmed without reservation.

This confident conclusion conflicts with standard clinical practice that requires an objective evaluation of a patient’s symptoms and, especially in children, a careful exploration of the psychosocial factors that often underlie gender distress. Yet, in many contemporary frameworks, questioning a child’s newly-declared gender identity is perceived as pathologizing gender nonconformity itself, and therefore discriminatory to those seeking to express an inner sense of self.

In 2023 the American Psychiatric Association’s publishing house released Gender-Affirming Psychiatric Care (GAPC), an exhaustive guide to gender nonconforming patients. This textbook recommends medical and surgical transition as appropriate treatment options for patients of all ages with gender distress, even when significant co-occurring conditions — such as autism, eating disorders, substance use disorders, and serious mental illness — are present.

According to GAPC, some gender-affirming clinicians believe an investigation of a patient’s reported gender distress that delays medical affirmation — which would be required for a comprehensive evaluation — is a form of gender-identity discrimination, and even conversion therapy.

Detransitioners who were subjected to irreversible medical interventions that damaged healthy organs and bodily functions are the unfortunate result of this detour away from objectivity.

This isn’t the first time patients have suffered from ideology infiltrating medicine. The eugenics movement is one such example that led to the coerced sterilization of as many as seventy thousand people. Eugenicists in the early twentieth century sought to improve the human race by limiting the reproduction of people deemed to be “feebleminded,” convincing even the U.S. Supreme Court justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, who famously quipped in his opinion favoring the forced sterilization of twenty-one-year-old Carrie Buck, “Three generations of imbeciles are enough.”

Detransitioners injured by gender interventions are a reminder of how ideological capture of medical institutions can lead to harm rather than healing.

March 12 is Detransition Awareness Day — an opportunity for the medical community to acknowledge the dangers of ideologically-driven medicine and reaffirm a commitment to objective and compassionate care that limits preventable injury.

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The AAMC Changes Course on ‘Cultural’ Competencies

The Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC) is continuing to walk back some of its more overt references to diversity in its public materials. It’s a sign that the AAMC is moderating the outward manifestations of its long-historied DEI infatuation, even if it hasn’t given up the ideology wholesale just yet.

At some point last month, the AAMC updated the language used in its “Premed Competencies for Entering Medical Students.” These “competencies” refer to the traits and skills that incoming medical students should possess to succeed and become effective physicians.

An archived version of the article, dated February 1, 2026, included a competency titled “cultural humility,” which it defined as the skill in which one: “Seeks out and engages diverse and divergent perspectives with a desire to understand and willingness to adjust one’s mindset; understands a situation or idea from alternative viewpoints; reflects on one’s values, beliefs, and identities and how they may affect others; reflects on and addresses bias in oneself and others; and fosters a supportive environment that values inclusivity.”

Similarly, the page previously included the competency of “Cultural awareness”: “Appreciates how historical, sociocultural, political, and economic factors affect others’ interactions, behaviors, and well-being; values diversity; and demonstrates a desire to learn about different cultures, beliefs, and values.”

Now, “Cultural humility” is known as “Self-awareness,” and “Cultural awareness” has become “Understanding others.”

The definitions of the new competencies do not make direct references to diversity and related concepts.

Furthermore, the AAMC’s resource page on its PREview exam has changed as well.

As Do No Harm previously reported, one of the goals of the PREview exam is to promote “inclusivity” and “level the playing field” for applicants. The exam was also assessed by “experts” in DEI.

“In discussing the exam with our DEI constituents, the sentiment has always been that it would help level the playing field for applicants,” said David Acosta, MD, AAMC chief diversity and inclusion officer, in a 2022 statement.

Previously, the resource page contained the following language: “The PREview exam provides medical schools with a more complete view of each applicant by assessing skills such as resilience and adaptability, service orientation, ethical responsibility to self and others, empathy and compassion, cultural awareness, cultural humility, and teamwork and collaboration, among others.”

The current resource page, however, makes no mention of “cultural awareness” or “cultural humility.”

Of course, the PREview exam itself does not appear to have changed, but it is worth noting that the AAMC is trying to subtly rebrand its purpose after explicitly linking it to DEI just a few years ago.

And once again, if there is truly a change of heart in the AAMC leadership regarding DEI, we should expect the AAMC to publicly state this to be the case.

Until that point, we should remain skeptical.

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The AMA Wants to Have It Both Ways on Gender Ideology

Recently, the AMA investigated one of its continuing medical education courses that was rife with gender ideology and unscientific endorsements of pediatric gender transitions, finding it did not comply with accreditation standards. But the AMA’s handling of the matter reveals the organization is still on board with gender activism.

Here’s the timeline:

In December, Do No Harm Medical Director Kurt Miceli, MD, submitted a complaint to the Accreditation Council for Continuing Medical Education (ACCME) over a course on pediatric gender medicine produced by the American Medical Association (AMA) that is best described as promoting gender ideology.

The complaint explained that the course, titled “LGBTQ+ Patient-Centered Practices,” violates the ACCME’s standards, which require that all educational recommendations for patient care be grounded in current science, supported by clinical reasoning, and presented in a fair and balanced manner.

As Do No Harm previously reported:

  • The course refused to acknowledge the fact that the overall quality of evidence for so-called “gender-affirming care” for minors is very low.
  • It ignored the numerous evidence reviews that have shown sex-denying medical interventions to be an unsupported means of addressing gender dysphoria in children.
  • It failed to properly acknowledge the numerous and substantial risks of these procedures.
  • And it even cited activist groups who seek to push gender ideology in the political realm.

Ultimately, the ACCME initiated an investigation and the AMA took the course down; the link to the course redirects to the AMA’s general CME webpage.

Then, in February of this year, the AMA Education Center sent out an email broadcasting the fact that the course did not meet the requisite accreditation standards.

Figure 1. A screenshot from an email sent by the AMA Education Center.

Here’s the relevant section:

After a recent review, we discovered the activity “LGBTQ+ Patient-Centered Practices” did not fully meet Standard 1 of the Standards for Integrity and Independence in Accredited Continuing Education, specifically subsection 4: “Although accredited continuing education is an appropriate place to discuss, debate, and explore new and evolving topics, these areas need to be clearly identified as such within the program and individual presentations. It is the responsibility of accredited providers to facilitate engagement with these topics without advocating for, or promoting, practices that are not, or not yet adequately based on current science, evidence, and clinical reasoning.”

At first blush, this seems encouraging.

One reading of this statement is that the AMA recognizes that its course was “advocating for” practices that are not based on current evidence.

But surely this conclusion was evident to any reviewer prior to the course’s publication. Why only now, after backlash against the course’s content, is the AMA deciding the course does not fully meet standards? 

What’s more, the AMA email then directs members to sources that it describes as providing “comprehensive, evidence-based guidelines and recommendations regarding appropriate and safe approaches for the problems or symptoms presented during” the course.

In other words, these sources are what the AMA considers authoritative sources of information on pediatric gender medicine. 

Of course, they are anything but.

The listed sources include the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) and UpToDate.

The AAP simply has not produced comprehensive evidence-based guidelines on pediatric gender medicine at all.

Instead, it has issued a policy statement, which it reaffirmed in 2023, that it clarifies is “not a comprehensive review of clinical approaches and nuances to pediatric care for children and youth that identify as” transgender. That policy statement includes the claim that puberty blockers are “reversible” treatments for gender dysphoria, a claim that is outright false.

Moreover, the AAP has criticized recent efforts to actually review the evidence behind sex-denying interventions for minors, dismissing the Department of Health and Human Services’ recent evidence review as prioritizing “opinions over dispassionate reviews of evidence.” This is, of course, a complete inversion of the truth.

UpToDate, meanwhile, is a clinical resource that provides clinicians with comprehensive summaries and detailed health information on a broad array of medical topics.

One of its resources is co-authored by Dr. Johanna Olson-Kennedy, a prominent advocate for and provider of so-called “gender-affirming care.” Reportedly, Olson-Kennedy had initially refused to publish the results of a multi-million dollar, federally-funded study which, according to The New York Times, had found that “puberty blockers did not lead to mental health improvements” in children.

UpToDate’s resources do not engage with the wealth of evidence on the harms of child sex change interventions and the corresponding lack of evidence supporting the procedures’ effectiveness.

What’s the takeaway from all of this? 

It seems like the AMA is talking out of both sides of its mouth.

For one, that the AMA believes these sources are authoritative indicates that it still is failing to grapple with the reality that the weight of evidence does not support so-called “gender-affiriming care.”

And second, that the course was created at all, and that it took a complaint to cause serious evaluation of the course’s content, does not inspire confidence in the AMA’s attitude regarding sex-denying interventions for minors.

The AMA’s attempt to distance itself from the more excessive promotions of gender ideology in its course is notable, to be sure.

But much more is necessary.

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Why Medicine Should Avoid the ‘Money-cillin’ Treatment

Two professors at the University of Pennsylvania’s medical school have identified an exciting new treatment to improve health outcomes. It consists of basically giving people money. The marketing department has developed better sounding terms for this treatment, like cash transfers or guaranteed income, but if the marketing folks were really clever, they would be calling it “money-cillin.” That worked for penicillin, right?

Whatever we call it, the idea being advanced by Drs. Aaron Richterman and Harsha Thirumurthy in The Atlantic is that this new treatment is one of the most important interventions in medicine: “when designed with the right basic ingredients, cash transfers are one of the most powerful levers that governments have to alleviate poverty and improve health.” As prominent professors at an Ivy League medical school, we can imagine that Drs. Richterman and Thirumurthy think that “money-cillin” should be studied by leading medical researchers and taught to future doctors. Sure, anatomy and physiology are important for healing patients, but so is welfare policy.

The only problem is that the effects of cash transfers on health outcomes have been rigorously studied and the results have been very disappointing. There was a large-scale experiment in the U.S. in which low-income people were given $1,000 in cash per month for three years and compared to a randomized control group that was given $50 per month. The evaluators, including leading economists from the University of Michigan and the University of California, Berkeley, produced two studies, one describing results on health outcomes and another describing results on labor outcomes. It is worth quoting their findings at length. On health outcomes they found:

Over the three year time horizon that we study, we find no effect of the transfer across several measures of physical health, and we can rule out even very small improvements. The transfer also did not improve mental health after the first year and by year 2 we can again reject very small improvements. We also find precise null effects on self-reported access to health care, physical activity, sleep, and several other measures related to preventive care and health behaviors. We find no effect of the transfer on the health of participants’ children, but we do find that children in treated households were more likely to be up to date on their vaccinations.

Not only did “money-cillin” fail to improve health outcomes, but it actually harmed people’s motivation to work. Again, quoting the results at length, the economists found:

The transfer caused total individual income excluding the transfers to fall by about $1,800/year relative to the control group and a 4.1 percentage point decrease in labor market participation. Participants reduced their work hours as a result of the transfers by 1-2 hours/week and participants’ partners reduced their work hours by a comparable amount. Among other categories of time use, the greatest increase generated by the transfer was in time spent on leisure. Despite asking detailed questions about amenities, we find no impact on quality of employment, and our confidence intervals can rule out even small improvements. Treated participants broadly increase expenditures, led by spending on non-durable goods and services, with smaller increases in spending on durable goods and human capital. We observe no significant effects on degree attainment, though the magnitudes of the estimated effects generally appear larger among younger participants. Measures of subjective well-being are higher among treated participants in the first year of the transfers but then revert to control group levels. Overall, our results suggest a moderate labor supply effect that does not appear offset by other productive activities.

Not surprisingly, giving people cash allows them to work less and spend more on leisure.

In The Atlantic article, Drs. Richterman and Thirumurthy briefly mention that guaranteed income pilot programs in the U.S. “haven’t delivered the dramatic health improvements associated with cash-transfer programs elsewhere.” Without mentioning the large-scale randomized controlled trial described above, they (falsely) assert that these programs have “seemingly produced only modest health gains in the United States.”

But don’t worry. Even when the evidence is against them, these scientists are so smart that they still know they are right. They offer a variety of hypotheses, unsubstantiated by research, to rationalize why money-cillin has not produced the results they expected in the U.S.

First, they falsely describe past efforts as providing too little money to make a difference: “a few hundred dollars a month for a relatively short period of time, typical of guaranteed-income pilots, rarely matches the steep costs of housing, child care, and health care.” The experiment described above provided $1,000 per month for 3 years.

Second, they suggest that cash transfers are insufficient given deeper societal problems: “In the U.S., the dominant health problems are chronic diseases shaped by neighborhood environments, structural inequities in housing and health care, and years of accumulated risk from unhealthy diets and other long-term exposures. These problems are far less responsive to short-term financial boosts. Cash can reduce stress and improve stability, but it cannot, on its own, undo the deep roots of these conditions.”

But if this were true, then it would be a pretty convincing argument against expanding cash transfer programs. Short of revolutionary change, simply providing money would make no difference. Along these same lines, they argue that cash transfers won’t work unless millions get them: “U.S. pilots have been small, reaching only hundreds or thousands of families—too limited to change the broader conditions that shape health outcomes.”

Third, they suggest that cash transfers need to be conditioned on other behaviors to be effective: “cash works best when it is woven into social infrastructure that families already rely on. In many low- and middle-income countries, payments are linked with health visits and other essential services.”

But if that were true, then they are really advocating for traditional welfare programs that place conditions on support rather than arguing for cash transfers or guaranteed income programs. And even though they have no evidence to support this hypothesis, any success of conditional cash transfers would leave it unclear whether the cash or the required behavior was producing any benefits.

After offering all of these rationalizations (and falsehoods), they point to food stamps to prove that expanding cash transfers is essential for improving health outcomes. But they have no experimental evidence—the kind typically required for approval of a new drug—-to support this claim and instead point to observational evidence reliant on complicated and opaque research designs to draw this conclusion. The problem with this kind of evidence is that the results are highly sensitive to researcher choices about research design and model specification, making them very easy to manipulate. When presented with conflicting evidence, we should believe the results of experiments over observational studies.

Arguments like those made by Drs. Richterman and Thirumurthy in this Atlantic article are the equivalent of advocating for communism because it’s never really been tried. It reveals an ideological commitment that is impervious to empirical evidence or scientific examination. Medical research and education should not be wasting time on money-cillin and should instead be focused on scientifically backed medical interventions that doctors can use to help their patients.

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Do No Harm Files Civil Rights Complaints Against Kaiser Permanente and CommUnityCare for Operating Discriminatory Patient Programs

SALT LAKE CITY, UTAH; March 3, 2026 – Do No Harm filed two complaints with the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) Office for Civil Rights (OCR) against Kaiser Permanente and CommUnityCare for operating race-based patient programs that violate multiple federal anti-discrimination laws.

Kaiser Permanente, the nation’s largest private not-for-profit healthcare organization, runs the “Center for Black Health and Wellness,” an “equity in action” program meant to provide primary healthcare to black patients and “even out” alleged health disparities between black and white individuals. The center’s inherently discriminatory mission, coupled with its name (which makes clear an explicit racial preference for black patients), communicates to members of other racial groups that they are unwelcome. Kaiser Permanente’s operation of the center violates Title VI of the Civil Rights Act and Section 1557 of the Affordable Care Act.

CommUnityCare, based in Austin, Texas, operates a “Black Men’s Health Clinic,” which is similarly designed to discriminate on the basis of race. As one of the state’s largest Federally Qualified Health Centers (FQHC), CommUnityCare receives a host of federally allotted benefits and is subject to multiple federal anti-discrimination laws including Title VI of the Civil Rights Act and Section 1557 of the Affordable Care Act, which forbid discrimination on the basis of race, color, ethnicity, and national origin.

In illegally singling out individuals for healthcare services based on race, both programs are premised on the pernicious stereotype that individuals of the same racial group are all the same—that one’s race says all the doctor needs to know about that person’s medical needs.

“Not only are medical providers like Kaiser and CommUnityCare flouting federal law, but they are also intentionally creating wider disparities in care among patient groups,” said Kurt Miceli, MD, Chief Medical Officer at Do No Harm. “Separating patient care based on race is illegal, immoral by nature, and deprioritizes high quality care in favor of identity-based care. We filed these complaints because the healthcare industry must stop the practice of racial discrimination.”

In addition to discriminating against patients based on race, Do No Harm’s complaints point to other disturbing indications that both clinics prioritize hiring black providers based on the myth of the benefits of racial concordance, which falsely claims patient care is better when provided by a doctor of the same race. Do No Harm has shown that the weight of evidence does not support the notion that racial concordance improves health outcomes.

Read the complaint against Kaiser Permanente and the complaint against CommUnityCare.

Do No Harm, established in April 2022, has rapidly gained recognition and made significant strides in its mission to safeguard healthcare from ideological threats. It has over 50,000 members, including doctors, nurses, physicians, and concerned citizens across all 50 states and 14 countries.

 

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Do No Harm, AAER, and Buckfire Law Agree to Amicably End Litigation over Buckfire’s Diversity Scholarships

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SALT LAKE CITY, UTAH: March 2, 2026 – On November 13, 2025, Do No Harm and the American Alliance for Equal Rights filed a lawsuit against Buckfire & Buckfire, P.C., alleging that the Michigan-based law firm’s diversity scholarships were not equally open to all participants. Buckfire denied the allegations, contending that the diversity scholarships were open to all students regardless of race or ethnicity.

On February 27, 2026, the parties agreed to amicably resolve the litigation and filed a joint stipulation of dismissal.

To make clear that the scholarship programs are open to all, Buckfire will remove all references to race as eligibility or selection criteria. Buckfire will also clarify that it does not limit “diversity” to any one experience, characteristic, or circumstance, and that its scholarships do not give any preference to any student based on race or ethnicity.

“Do No Harm believes scholarships should be equally open to all races and is thankful that Buckfire agrees,” said Stanley Goldfarb, MD, Chairman of Do No Harm.

“We’re grateful to Buckfire for working with us to resolve this matter without the need for further litigation,” said Edward Blum, President of American Alliance for Equal Rights.

“Helping students achieve their educational dreams is a core mission of our law firm. We look forward to providing scholarships that fulfill our commitment to diversity for many years to come,” said Lawrence Buckfire, President of The Buckfire Law Firm.

Do No Harm, established in April 2022, has rapidly gained recognition and made significant strides in its mission to safeguard healthcare from ideological threats. It has over 50,000 members, including doctors, nurses, physicians, and concerned citizens across all 50 states and 14 countries.

 

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Castle Connolly Once Again Promotes ‘Racial Concordance’

Castle Connolly, a company that ranks medical professionals, hospitals, and practices, is out with the 2026 edition of its “Top Black Doctors” report. 

And, like the 2025, 2024, and 2023 editions on which Do No Harm reported, Castle Connolly references the notion that racial concordance, in which patients are treated by physicians of the same background, improves health outcomes.

In an article related to its “Top Doctors” awards, Castle Connolly, in a section titled “Representation matters, while access remains a challenge,” writes the following: “About one in three Black patients say it is important to have a doctor who shares their race, gender, or personal identity. Yet 40% report having difficulty finding a physician with these characteristics.”

This appears to be an implicit nod to the idea that it is desirable for patients to see physicians of the same race.

“This gap adds another layer of challenge to the already time-intensive process of selecting a doctor, and underscores the value of credible resources that help patients identify clinicians who understand their experiences,” Castle Connolly writes.

The company first released its list of “Top Black Doctors” in 2023 as a part of Castle Connolly’s efforts toward expanding DEI practices. 

In this first announcement of the “Top Black Doctors” Steve Leibforth, Managing Director at Castle Connolly, stated, “For patients, having access to a doctor with a similar background or shared experience can improve the quality of care and positively impact health outcomes.”

Castle Connolly appears to be promoting the notion that it is desirable for patients to be seen by physicians of the same race. 

These lists encourage patients to search for physicians who share their racial identity, which Castle Connolly appears to suggest has some undescribed benefit on health and well-being.

To be clear, the weight of the evidence shows that racial concordance has no impact on health outcomes.

What’s more, Castle Connolly has also recognized top doctors from other identity groups; these include: “Top Asian and Pacific Islander Doctors,” “Top Hispanic & Latino Doctors,” “Top LGBTQ+ Doctors,” and “Exceptional Women in Medicine.” 

As we remarked last time, this is the road toward segregation and division.

Transgender,Flag,,Shadows,And,Silhouettes,Of,People,On,A,Road,

The AAMC Just Can’t Quit Gender Ideology

Given recent statements from organizations like the American Society of Plastic Surgeons recommending against certain sex-denying medical procedures for minors, one might think that prominent medical associations would think twice before endorsing the dangerous and experimental practices of the child transgender industry.

But last week, the Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC) submitted comments on two rules recently proposed by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) that would restrict taxpayer funding of sex-denying interventions for minors.

The CMS rules would both prevent hospitals from performing sex-denying procedures on minors as a condition of participating in Medicare and Medicaid programs, as well as require state Medicaid and Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP) plans to provide that they will not pay for these procedures for minors.

Cutting off taxpayer funding for such harmful, life-altering interventions would appear to be common sense. 

As a wealth of recent research, including the review published by the Department of Health and Human Services in 2025, has shown, the evidence base for so-called “gender-affirming care” is very weak.

But apparently, the AAMC thinks otherwise. 

Although the AAMC comments make several legal arguments, it’s the medical arguments that are particularly noteworthy for their dubious (at best) claims.

“Medical decisions are best made by patients and their families, in consultation with their physicians, based on clinical evidence, professional judgment, and the individual needs and values of the patient,” the AAMC writes.

This statement may be true in a vacuum, but it is simply not the case that decisions regarding child sex change interventions are made based on “clinical evidence” or “professional judgment,” much less the “individual needs” of the patient.

As mentioned, the “clinical evidence” for the efficacy of so-called “gender-affirming care” is effectively nonexistent. Instead, ample research has shown that these interventions impose serious harms upon vulnerable children who cannot meaningfully consent to these irreversible, life-altering procedures.

“Gender-affirming care” in practice simply does not adhere to these standards.

Next, the AAMC declares that “It is inappropriate for government policies (such as this proposal that would prohibit funding for an entire class of services) to intrude into the physician-patient relationship – undermining both quality of care and patient trust.”

Perhaps nothing has undermined patient trust, or at least public trust in major medical institutions, in the past few decades more than the rise of gender ideology in medicine. 

Rather than confront the reality that “gender-affirming care” is unsupported and dangerous, medical associations often defer to activists and gender ideologues more interested in imposing their worldview onto the medical field, to the detriment of children across the country.

Unfortunately, this embrace of gender ideology is par for the course for the AAMC. 

According to leaked footage obtained by The Daily Wire from last fall, the organization’s leadership pledged to continue backing efforts to oppose laws and regulations cracking down on sex-denying interventions for minors.

If this isn’t a wake-up call for medical schools to seriously reckon with the ideological infiltration of the AAMC, then what is?

stethoscope

Do No Harm Submits Comment on Federal Rules Restricting Funding for Child Sex Changes

This week, Do No Harm submitted a comment on two rules proposed by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) that seek to restrict taxpayer funding of sex-rejecting interventions for minors.

The first rule would prevent hospitals from performing these procedures on minors as a condition of participating in Medicare and Medicaid programs. 

The second rule would require state Medicaid and Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP) plans to provide that they will not pay for sex-rejecting procedures for minors; this would effectively cut off Medicaid/CHIP funding for these interventions.

Do No Harm’s comment begins by laying out the need for these rules. It explores the lack of evidence supporting child sex change interventions as a means of treating gender-distressed children, citing the fact that every comprehensive review, including the review published by the Department of Health and Human Services in 2025, has found the evidence base for these procedures to be weak.

Our comment lists multiple European countries that have restricted access to sex-rejecting procedures due to such findings.

The comment also cites the recent position statement by the American Society of Plastic Surgeons in which the organization recommended against sex-denying surgeries for minors, citing the lack of evidence.

Do No Harm’s comment also proposes several revisions to the language of the proposed rules.

First, our comment proposes definitions for “female,” “male,” and “sex” borrowed from the Chloe Cole Act, legislation that seeks to prevent healthcare providers from performing sex-rejecting medical interventions on children.

Considering that the proposed rule is targeting procedures that modify a child’s body to appear different than that of the child’s natal sex, the definitions of these terms are critical for the functioning of the rule. Do No Harm’s revised definitions are intended to guard against ambiguity.

Female is a person who naturally has, had, will have, or would have but for a congenital anomaly or intentional or unintentional disruption, the reproductive system that produces, transports, and utilizes the large gamete (ova) for fertilization. 

Male is a person who naturally has, had, will have, or would have but for a congenital anomaly or intentional or unintentional disruption, the reproductive system that produces, transports, and utilizes the small gamete (sperm) for fertilization. 

Sex means a person’s immutable biological classification, determined at the moment of conception, as either male or female.

Next, our comment proposes altering the definition of “sex-rejecting procedure” to more clearly encompass a broader array of medical interventions. The proposed rule currently defines sex-rejecting procedures as procedures that attempt to “align a child’s physical appearance or body with an asserted identity that differs from the child’s sex” by:

“(1) Intentionally disrupting or suppressing the normal development of natural biological functions, including primary or secondary sex-based traits; or

(2) Intentionally altering a child’s physical appearance or body, including amputating, minimizing or destroying primary or secondary sex-based traits such as the sexual and reproductive organs.”

However, these descriptions of “sex-rejecting procedure[s]” may not cover a broader range of “gender-affirming care” procedures that do not “destroy” sex-based traits, such as body contouring (among others). For this reason, Do No Harm proposed revisions to make clear that these broader range of procedures are included in the definition of “sex-rejecting procedure.”

Our proposed language would expand this universe of prohibited procedures to those that alter a child’s physical appearance by “intentionally changing a child’s body, including the child’s external appearance or biological functions, when the change is purposed to align the child’s body with the opposite sex.” The comment also proposes alternative revisions to this definition.

And third, the comment proposes language to clarify that restrictions on Medicaid/CHIP coverage for sex-rejecting procedures should explicitly exclude treatments for precocious puberty, a well-recognized pediatric endocrine condition.

You can read the full comment here.

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American College of Physicians Goes All-In on Radical Political Activism

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In November 2025, the American College of Physicians (ACP) published its most recent “policy compendium” showing the particular policy positions for which the ACP is advocating.

The compendium is rife with endorsements of discriminatory practices, as well as gender ideology, and represents a radical streak within the ACP’s mission. 

Indeed, one section of the compendium is devoted entirely to DEI initiatives, with the justification that a “diverse, equitable, and inclusive physician workforce is crucial to promote equity and understanding among clinicians and patients and to facilitate quality care […].”

In short, the ACP is promoting radical identity politics and racial discrimination to the detriment of clinical excellence and patient care.

Key Takeaways

Racial Discrimination in Admissions

Several of the ACP’s policy positions explicitly call for racial discrimination in medical school and healthcare education admissions:

  • “Medical and other health professional schools should revitalize and bolster efforts to improve matriculation and graduation rates of racial and ethnic minority students.”
  • “Institutions of higher education should appropriately consider a person’s race and ethnicity as one factor in determining admission in order to counter the impact of current discriminatory practices and the legacy of past discrimination practices and better reflect the current composition of the population.” 
  • “Programs that provide outreach to encourage racial and ethnic minority enrollment in medical and other health professional schools should be maintained, reinstated, and expanded, including diversity/ minority affairs offices, scholarships, and other financial aid programs.” 

Needless to say, prioritizing race and ethnicity for enrollment and academic progress is textbook racial discrimination, regardless of the justification for it. Were the ACP’s policy proposals to be implemented, medical schools would reject many qualified candidates who have the rigor and dedication to attend medical school in favor of those who tick the correct racial boxes. This obviously harms the future physician pool, leading to downstream negative effects on patient care.

Racial Discrimination in Healthcare

The ACP’s endorsement of racial discrimination also extends outside of the medical education context to healthcare more broadly:

  • “All arenas of the health care workforce should be incentivized to implement evidence-based best practices in the recruitment, retention, and advancement of health professionals of Black, Indigenous, Latinx, Asian American, Native Hawaiian, Pacific Islander, and other persons affected by discrimination.”
  • “Developing a hiring diversity strategy to recruit racial and ethnic minority candidates by drafting open job descriptions, broadly advertising open positions outside of traditional venues, better understanding the pathway of diverse talent, and conducting outreach to develop more relationships with diverse candidates.”
  • “Implementing health care career pathway programs to engage and connect Black, Indigenous, Latinx, Asian American, Native Hawaiian, Pacific Islander, and other students affected by discrimination and expose them to and advance their readiness for careers in medicine.” 

Hiring and recruiting should, especially in the medical context, be about selecting the best candidate for the job. The stakes of healthcare are significantly higher than other domains, and it is irresponsible (and obviously unfair and unethical) to implement a “hiring diversity strategy” that sacrifices merit at the altar of identity politics.

When the best candidate is hired, regardless of race, it is patients who win. 

Endorsement of Sex-Denying Interventions on Minors

Moreover, in December 2025 the ACP sent a letter to Congress, alongside several other medical associations including the American Academy of Pediatrics, the American College of Obstetricians & Gynecologists, and the American Psychiatric Association, expressing its endorsement of child sex change interventions.

“Health care for transgender young people is individualized, age-appropriate, provided according to longstanding expert clinical guidelines, and supported by leading American medical organizations,” the letter states.

This ignores the volume of evidence demonstrating the harms of so-called “gender-affirming care” and the comparative lack of support for these interventions. The Department of Health and Human Services in 2025 published a comprehensive review of the evidence behind sex-denying interventions for minors and found there to be insufficient evidence to support these practices, while the United Kingdom’s Cass Review found “remarkably weak evidence” to support the use of puberty blockers and hormone treatments for minors.

And for the record, the last claim has a significant caveat: the American Society of Plastic Surgeons has now come out against sex-denying surgeries for minors.

All told, these policy positions demonstrate just how determined the ACP is to advance discriminatory, divisive ideology.

This is unbecoming of a medical association, and indicates a derogation of the ACP’s fundamental duty to work to advance the health of patients everywhere.

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The American Hospital Association Quietly Scrubs Evidence of DEI Activities

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In 2022, the American Hospital Association’s (AHA) Institute for Diversity and Health Equity (IFDHE) conducted a survey showing that DEI had infected many American hospitals.

The survey was administered to over 6,000 hospitals and achieved more than 1,300 responses. Do No Harm reported on the survey’s findings in early 2024:

  • 96% of respondents believe diversity is extremely or very important to the future of U.S. health care;
  • 97% believe equity is extremely or very important to the future of U.S. health care; and
  • 97% believe inclusion is extremely or very important to the future of U.S. health care.

Obviously, these findings are very troubling. They indicate a near-unanimous endorsement of DEI principles among America’s hospitals.

But now, not only is that report no longer available on the AHA website, but the entire IFDHE webpage is no longer available at all.

According to the digital archive Wayback Machine, the report was last available on the AHA site as far back as January 9, 2025; curiously, right before the inauguration of President Donald Trump, who issued several executive orders in his first few days in office targeting DEI in healthcare.

Meanwhile, the IFDHE website was last publicly available, per the Wayback Machine, at some point in late January to early February 2025.

The IFDHE website now redirects to a webpage on the main AHA website titled “Reducing Disparities in Health Outcomes,” as does the report. The IFDHE X account has also not posted since late 2024.

From these facts, it’s unclear whether the AHA has abandoned its DEI institute altogether, or simply removed its public footprint. 

But that’s not the only scrubbing the AHA has done over the past year.

In 2015, the AHA created a campaign titled the “#123forEquity Pledge to Act to Eliminate Health Care Disparities.”

The pledge, signed by hospital and health system leaders, included commitments “to take action” on at least one of the following goals: “Increase the collection, stratification and use of race, ethnicity, language preference and other sociodemographic data to improve quality and safety”; “Increase cultural competency training to ensure culturally responsive care”; “Advance diversity in leadership and governance to reflect the communities served”; and “Improve and strengthen community partnerships.” 

The third item in that list is particularly worrying as it indicates an endorsement of racial discrimination.

The pledge was signed by more than 1,700 hospitals as of early 2024.

But that pledge, too, has vanished from the AHA website. 

Indeed, even in the 2015 press release announcing the pledge, the link to the pledge details redirects to the “Reducing Disparities in Health Outcomes” webpage. A search for the pledge on the AHA website indicates that content related to the pledge, as well as other DEI-related materials, requires AHA membership to access.

The last archive available of the pledge on the Wayback Machine is dated January 2, 2025.

At the very least, it seems that the AHA is attempting to distance itself from its more overt attempts to inject DEI into hospital practices.

But that’s not good enough.

The AHA should make clear that it disavows these divisive, discriminatory practices, and commit to ensuring that hospitals prioritize the health and safety of their patients over ideological goals.

Doctor,Pocket,With,Pen,,Stethoscope,And,Other,Equipment,,Close-up

The AAMC Tries to Sell the Public on ‘Health Equity.’ We’re Not Buying It

Last month, the Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC) Center for Health Justice published a poll ostensibly showing Americans’ support for “health equity” – a somewhat nebulous concept often used to refer to efforts that seek to equalize health outcomes between racial groups through discrimination.

The AAMC poll asks respondents whether they are in favor of “everyone having a fair and just opportunity to attain their highest level of health.” 

Who could be against such a harmless platitude? But support for this goal, the AAMC implies, is actually support for “health equity.”

Indeed, in the article announcing the poll, Center for Health Justice Founding Director Philip M. Alberti attempts to redefine what health equity has long meant:

“[Health equity] does not mean equal health outcomes. It does not mean handing out unfair advantage. It does not mean taking health away from one community to give it to another — there is enough health to go around.”

If only the AAMC actually believed this.

As Do No Harm has documented, the AAMC itself has used the language of “health equity” to refer to initiatives that seek to equalize outcomes between racial groups, often through racial discrimination.

At the AAMC’s 2024 annual meeting, the organization hosted a session called “Strategies for Continuing the Commitment to DEI Values and Achieving Health Equity” in which speakers discussed methods for continuing racially conscious admissions practices.

The AAMC’s amicus brief in support of racially discriminatory admissions policies refers to health equity in the context of equalized health outcomes: “Thousands of other studies have documented race-linked health inequities pervading nearly every index of human health, which combine to result in an overall reduced life expectancy for racial and ethnic minorities that cannot be explained by genetics.”

Alberti even co-authored a research brief published not two years ago titled “Racial Justice and Health Equity: Public Perspectives on Reparations in America,” advocating for racial reparations (which are of course inherently discriminatory) to address health inequities!

It’s hard to see how transferring wealth from one racial group to another, or prioritizing certain racial groups over others in admissions, isn’t “handing out unfair advantage.”

The AAMC is shamelessly attempting to conflate a shorthand for racial discrimination with an anodyne commitment to “opportunity.”

If it were true that the AAMC had suddenly ditched its discriminatory ways, then we would applaud.

But, given the past few years of strident advocacy for racial discrimination, we’re just not buying it.

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Do Harm Submits Comment to FDA Urging Oversight of Off-Label Estrogen Use in Males

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In December 2025, Do No Harm co-signed a citizen petition asking the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to address the risks of the widespread off-label prescription of estrogen to males for the purpose of so-called “gender-affirming care.”

The petition urged the FDA to open a dedicated docket to evaluate the safety and effectiveness of this off-label estrogen use in males and to convene a Part 15 public hearing to gather expert and patient testimonies on its risks and benefits, along with other safety measures.

Now, this week, Do No Harm submitted a comment on the citizen petition reaffirming the dangers of off-label estrogen use in males and reiterating calls for the FDA to take action through a public hearing.

“The evidence from both the literature and clinical practice shows that the risks associated with estrogen use in natal males are well-documented and significant,” the comment states. “Physicians prescribing estrogen and males receiving estrogen must be fully informed of these potential adverse effects.”

“Unfortunately, current labeling for estrogen-containing products does not adequately warn clinicians or patients about the dangers associated with this off-label use, undermining informed consent and patient safety,” the comment continues.

The comment additionally urges the FDA to take up the citizen’s petitions recommendations to (1) mandate a boxed warning on all relevant estrogen-containing products detailing the severe risks associated with their off-label use in males, (2) conduct a comprehensive safety review, and (3) mandate enhanced adverse event reporting to guide clinicians to report any serious adverse events the drugs create for patients.

Read the full comment here.

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To Really ‘Do No Harm,’ Get Politics Out of Clinical Practice

What does it mean to “do no harm?” Is the maxim a guideline establishing the bounds of ethical and beneficial clinical practice, or an affirmative obligation for something else?

The 2025 capstone presentation from then-Mayo Clinic Chief Resident Dr. Taylor Christian, titled “First do no harm: the history and origin of medical racism,” provides one potential theory.

The presentation’s teaser asks the question, “Can we fulfill our oath to ‘do no harm’ if we ignore the harm of racial injustice in medicine?”

“Understanding the historical roots and persistent impact of medical racism isn’t just informative; it is a call to action,” the teaser continues. “This presentation is an opportunity to learn, reflect, and act to become better advocates.”

It is absolutely the case that racism has no place in medicine and that physicians should ensure they do not engage in racial discrimination in clinical practice.

Yet by conflating a physician’s duty to his or her patients with an affirmative obligation to “advocate” against “racial injustice,” Dr. Christian is making a category error, and a very harmful one at that. 

“Doing no harm” is not a call for physicians to transform themselves into activists in the workplace; in fact, quite the opposite. Physicians cannot provide the best possible care to their patients if they are mediating their clinical interactions through the lens of a particular political agenda.

Unfortunately, Dr. Christian’s presentation would suggest otherwise.

The premise of the presentation itself is that systemic racism is the driver for disparities in health outcomes between racial groups, and physicians have an obligation to address systemic racism in clinical practice.

Although details are scarce on what the actual mechanisms of racism are that could cause these disparities, Dr. Christian does provide a few explanations, including implicit bias.

“I encourage each of you to take the Harvard Implicit Association Test, or the IAT for short,” she said, referring to a test aimed at measuring implicit or unconscious bias. 

As ample research has shown, these tests are, at best, a poor predictor of real-world behavior such that “implicit bias” cannot be seriously characterized as a catch-all explanation for racial health disparities that lack convenient explanations.

It is unwise, to say the least, to attribute causal significance to a phenomenon that can neither be reliably measured nor demonstrate any degree of validity.

Next, to describe the model values of physicians working to combat racism in medicine, Dr. Christian quoted the Mayo Clinic’s “Commitment Against Racism.”

That included efforts to work on “Reflecting the diversity of our patients and communities among our staff, students and leaders by ensuring equal employment, educational and advancement opportunities for all.” 

It also included a pledge to “strengthen our diversity and inclusion pipeline programs for health care professionals” and “recruit and develop clinical leaders who are representative of our broader community.”

Dr. Christian concluded the presentation by discussing ways for physicians to address racism in clinical practice.

These included policing microaggressions, incorporating anti-racism into curricula, and “promoting diversity” more broadly. 

“So, as far as our call to action today: what can we do as healthcare providers?” Dr. Christian asked. “Acknowledge and challenge our implicit biases. Advocate for policy and systemic changes. Promote diversity, equity, and inclusion. Get involved with our emergency department DEI team.” 

(Interestingly, the Mayo Clinic renamed its DEI department to the “Office of Belonging” in April 2025.)

In short, this is a vision of clinical practice that presents activism and advocacy as a necessary part of a physician’s duties.

This is not “doing no harm,” but reimagining the physician as a DEI activist, to the detriment of patients and medicine more generally.

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The Medical Residency ‘Match’ Program Promotes the DEI Agenda

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After doctors graduate from medical school, they enter a residency program, applying through the Electronic Residency Application Service (ERAS) run by the Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC). 

The National Resident Matching Program (the NRMP), a private organization, uses an algorithm to place applicants into residency and fellowship positions.

Beginning in 2022, the NRMP began collecting demographic data on applicants who used its service. This data collection is voluntary.

However, this decision was explicitly motivated by the NRMP’s goal to address diversity in residency programs.

“The decision was driven by support from national learner organizations and members of the broader medical education community who viewed the NRMP as the entity best positioned to lead efforts to characterize the current state of diversity in the transition to residency and encourage greater equity in the ranking and matching processes,” the NRMP stated in a 2023 research brief addressing its demographic data collection. 

“When registering for the Match, applicants are invited to provide information on characteristics including sex and gender, race, and ethnicity as well as socio-economic status, first-generation education, and disability,” the NRMP continued.

While the NRMP makes clear that its demographic data “will never be incorporated in any way into the matching algorithm,” the NRMP nevertheless uses its findings to advocate for diversity initiatives, some of which appear to be racially discriminatory. 

“There is a clear need to build greater applicant diversity earlier in the pipeline so as to eliminate the imbalances in representation, race in particular, that drive findings like these,” the NRMP stated in its research brief.

Indeed, the NRMP explicitly cites diversity initiatives that “have focused on modifying selection, interview, and ranking processes for residency” to increase the representation of “URiM” students (students from underrepresented minority groups).

That sounds an awful lot like racial discrimination.

One such referenced initiative explicitly devalued the role of applicants’ test scores for an emergency medicine residency program at the Emory University School of Medicine, reasoning that “racial disparities exist in standardized tests.”

Another initiative explicitly prioritized URiM applicants in the interview process at the University of Utah Health.

And still another included specific recommendations for program admissions officials to favor racial minorities in multiple stages of the application process. 

Moreover, although the NRMP may not be explicitly using race to match applicants to residency programs, the organization outright admits that its data collection efforts are to achieve “greater diversity and equity in medicine.” An excerpt from its 2022 annual report reads as follows:

There is much discussion about the need for greater diversity and equity in medicine, but to achieve that objective, the origins of underrepresented in medicine must be examined. For the NRMP, that means revealing and analyzing the applicant profile, not just along racial and ethnical lines but also gender identification, socioeconomic status, and disability. It will benefit the profession to understand how different demographic characteristics are viewed, integrated into the transition to residency process, and impact outcomes.

Another excerpt states the NRMP is intent on “leveraging applicant demographic and specialty preference data to address workforce equity, especially for underserved populations.”

In less-Orwellian terms, the NRMP is making clear that its demographic data collection efforts will help residency programs better promote “diversity” (read: engage in racial discrimination).

Imagine how applicants of disfavored racial groups feel: they are trusting an organization to place them into a program that will further their career, in which they’ve invested a nearly-unfathomable amount of time and effort. 

And that organization is enabling discrimination against them on the basis of their race!

That is unconscionable.