A conservative law firm is alleging that Cleveland Clinic’s race-based medical programs violate federal anti-discrimination laws, specifically Title VI and the Affordable Care Act, in a civil-rights complaint filed Wednesday.
The complaint by the Wisconsin Institute for Law & Liberty, or WILL, accuses the Ohio-based medical center of prioritizing minority patients under its Minority Stroke Program and Minority Men’s Health Center instead of administering medical care to everyone regardless of skin color. Both programs provide treatment, prevention, education, and other resources to racial and ethnic minorities suffering from strokes, diabetes, or other health conditions.
The Milwaukee-based WILL filed the complaint on behalf of its client, Do No Harm, a national association of medical professionals that seeks to keep racially discriminatory policies and programs out of the American healthcare system.
WILL asked the Department of Health and Human Services’ civil-rights office to open a formal investigation into allegations of racial discrimination.
“Given that stroke and diabetes are leading causes of death in the United States, and that mental health conditions plague more than one in five adults, extending the care efforts described by the clinic’s special stroke and men’s health programs to all patients who need it would be commendable,” the complaint states. “Instead, a racially motivated focus has infected these programs—creating a racial dichotomy under which patients are prioritized and cared for, and displacing the otherwise laudable goal of helping humanity equally, without regard to one’s race.”
The Minority Stroke Program aims to “increase stroke awareness among minority groups in order to lower stroke rates and improve stroke outcomes” for demographics with higher rates of stroke, Cleveland Clinic’s website explains. Because blacks and Latinos are more likely to experience strokes than their white counterparts, the program focuses on the medical needs of minorities instead of providing equal care to all patients.
Likewise, the Minority Men’s Health Center seeks to treat minority male populations suffering from diabetes, hypertension, prostate cancer, stroke, and various other illnesses. It was founded in 2003 to “broadly address the health issues that particularly impact African American and Hispanic men,” the clinic’s website reads.
WILL argues Cleveland Clinic’s “present and ongoing” racially discriminatory programming is in direct violation of Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and Section 1557 of the ACA. Both laws prevent recipients of federal funding, such as the private Cleveland Clinic, from engaging in discrimination, racial or otherwise. Title VI prohibits discrimination based on race, color, and national origin. The ACA covers the same protected characteristics as well as sex, age, and disability.
Cleveland Clinic flouts these laws, the complaint says, by segregating or separating patient care based on race and applying medical services to people differently.
“The problem with Cleveland Clinic’s racial persona grata / persona non grata model is that it engages the dangerous practice of using race as a proxy for legitimate health risks,” WILL Associate Counsel Cara Tolliver said in a statement.
“Whether a particular patient should be prioritized, promoted, pursued, and included for medical assistance and care does not change simply because a patient is the wrong color,” she added. “Cleveland Clinic’s endeavor to create a dichotomy of care that assumes what individuals need based on their race is both inappropriate and illegal.”
Cleveland Clinic maintains in its non-discrimination notice that it complies with “applicable Federal civil rights laws,” does not “discriminate on the basis of race, color, [or] national origin,” and does not “exclude people or treat them differently because of race, color, [or] national origin.”
A Cleveland Clinic spokesperson told National Review that it has not heard from HHS’s Office for Civil Rights about the complaint. “Our mission is to care for life, research for health, and educate those we serve. Our job in fulfilling our mission is to care for all individuals across the communities we serve regardless of race, ethnicity, or other characteristics,” the clinic’s spokesperson said.
WILL’s complaint comes on the heels of the Supreme Court’s June 2023 ruling in Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard that Harvard College and the University of North Carolina violated Title VI by judging undergraduate admissions applicants based on race. The WILL complaint notes the landmark decision applies to all Title VI actors, not just higher-education institutions.
WILL recently filed a similar civil-rights complaint against the American Bar Association and three law schools for prioritizing diverse law students for judicial clerkship and internship opportunities. The law firm also sued the State Bar of Wisconsin for exclusively offering internships to minority and LGBTQ+ law applicants.
That lawsuit resulted in Wisconsin’s state bar association reaching a partial settlement to change its definition of “diversity” and allow all first-year law students to apply for its Diversity Clerkship Program regardless of physical traits or sexual orientation. The new definition extends beyond immutable characteristics, like race and sex, by covering viewpoint diversity. The agreement was only partial, as the case proceeds in court.