DEI oaths in taxpayer-funded medical schools draw legal threats, bump against Trump orders

Rhode Island College got a break a year ago when the Supreme Court declined to review whether its taxpayer-funded officials could be held personally liable for failing a social work studentwho refused to lobby for legislation he opposed, a vehicle for possibly overturning the SCOTUS-created doctrine of “qualified immunity.”

Public universities are still testing the legal limits of what they can force students to say, even if it’s not clear what they expect students to do, prompting confrontations with free-speech groups and likely the second Trump administration, which has wasted no time invoking executive power against all forms of diversity, equity and inclusion.

The Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression sent a legal warning letter Friday to the University of Connecticut School of Medicine for apparently requiring freshmen to recite what FIRE called an “ideologically-charged version of the Hippocratic Oath” at their “white coat ceremony” last summer, which kicks off their medical education. (Starting at 43:30, an official calls the oath “slightly modified and updated.”)

Read more in Just The News.