The suit was brought by Do No Harm, a nonprofit dedicated to ending racial preferences in the medical field.
A nonprofit dedicated to ending racial preferences in the medical field is suing the National Association of Emergency Medical Technicians contending that the organization’s diversity scholarship program, which is open only to “students of color,” is illegal.
The lawsuit filed on Wednesday in U.S. District Court in the Southern District of Mississippi argues that the scholarship program, which awards up to four $1,250 scholarships to non-white students, violates several federal laws, including a portion of the U.S. Code that prohibits racial discrimination in the making and enforcing of contracts.
It is the latest legal challenge by Do No Harm, a nonprofit founded in 2022 and aimed at “protecting healthcare from the disastrous consequences of identity politics.” Do No Harm has previously sued Pfizer, the healthcare journal Health Affairs, as well as medical boards in California, Louisiana, and Tennessee, among others organizations.
The nonprofit’s founder, Dr. Stanley Goldfarb, a former professor emeritus and associate dean at the University of Pennsylvania Perelman School of Medicine, has long argued that affirmative-action programs are harmful to the medical field and often inadvertently hurt the minority students they are designed to help. Goldfarb told National Review that the NAEMT’s race-based scholarship program is “discriminatory, plain and simple.”
When reached via email, an NAEMT spokeswoman declined to comment on the legal case.
The NAEMT describes itself as the nation’s only association for emergency medical responders. Its diversity scholarship program “was established to help support underrepresented groups in joining the EMS profession, and to promote the development of greater diversity in the EMS workforce,” according to a section on its website that explained the program. The page seems to have been taken down since the lawsuit was filed, but archived versions remain online.
The program awards up to four $1,250 scholarships to “students of color.” The money can be used for tuition, fees, and books, according to the website, which adds that recipients of the scholarships “must sign a contract” agreeing to the program’s guidelines.
The application period for the scholarships was February 1 through March 31.
According to the Do No Harm lawsuit, NAEMT “normally has its professionals pledge to serve everyone, ‘unrestricted by consideration of nationality, race, creed, [or] color.’” But “white students are flatly excluded” from the organization’s diversity scholarship.
“NAEMT is not just violating its pledge. It’s violating federal law,” the lawsuit contends.
Goldfarb told National Review that Do No Harm received a tip about the scholarship program. One of the organization’s members — a white woman who wants to be an EMT, and who is estranged from her father and in financial need — could benefit from the scholarship if she wasn’t white. The unnamed woman is included in the lawsuit.
The lawsuit seeks a permanent injunction barring NAEMT from continuing with the race-based program, along with one dollar in nominal damages. “We’re not looking for monetary damages from these people,” Goldfarb said. “We’re looking for them to do the right thing.”
He said the scholarship program would be “completely appropriate” if it was targeted at people from disadvantaged backgrounds, but “to do it on the basis of skin color is ridiculous.”
Goldfarb said this suit and others that it has filed over the last couple of years are also meant to send a message that race-based hiring, training, contracting, and scholarship programs are not acceptable and are not legal in the United States. The goal is to discourage organizations from establishing these programs in the first place.
“And then we won’t have to sue anybody anymore,” he said.
The message is already starting to be received in the medical field where risk reduction is “really important” for big, consolidating healthcare organizations, Goldfarb said.
“Being sued is risky,” he said. “It’s not good publicity, and it takes their time. So, they’re going to decide not to pursue these. And I think we’re starting to see that.”
Do No Harm is part of a collection of conservative civil-rights firms pushing back on leftist proponents of affirmative action programs and diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives who seek to use identity-based discrimination to correct past wrongs against historically marginalized groups and to redistribute power in the country.
The movement got a big win last summer when the Supreme Court, in a landmark decision, held that it is unconstitutional for colleges and universities to consider a prospective student’s race in their admissions processes. But challenges remain in other fields.
“It’s going to take time,” Goldfarb said of the effort. “It’s going to be a long, long fight.”
Goldfarb said that in healthcare, the country needs to stop looking backward to correct historical wrongs. Instead, he said, healthcare leaders should be forward-looking and focused on recruiting the most qualified people to the field, regardless of their race, so the U.S. has “the best healthcare system that we can possibly have.”
“We’re not going to have that if we decided we’re going to do it on the basis of race,” he said. “It’s just logically wrong. It just doesn’t make any sense.”