US Medical Schools Cautiously Navigate Admissions in New Legal, Political Environment

Stanley Goldfarb, MD, chairman of Do No Harm, a legal activism and policy advocacy group opposed to DEI in healthcare, credited the Supreme Court decision for validating his organization’s work. “It just set the table for the idea that what we were doing was going to be consistent with the law of the land,” he said.

Since 2022, Do No Harm has filed or supported 14 lawsuits against healthcare-related organizations and filed 86 federal civil rights complaints against medical and nursing schools for diversity initiatives the organization contended were discriminatory.

Do No Harm supports proposed legislation that would eliminate federal funding for medical schools with DEI offices. Society should be colorblind, and DEI, which racially separates people, is discriminatory, said Goldfarb, contending that medical school admissions “should be based completely on merit and nothing else.” He also challenged the notion that patients who receive care from doctors of the same race have better outcomes, noting evidence that hasn’t supported that conclusion.

Goldfarb said Do No Harm, formed in 2022, has 14,000 members, including doctors, other healthcare workers, and patients. The total figure is a small fraction of the 1.1 million practicing physicians in the United States, but Goldfarb said that membership doubled from earlier this year.

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