The Arkansas Minority Health Commission has been sued for offering a scholarship that excludes white applicants
.
Brought by the health advocacy group Do No Harm, the lawsuit alleges the commission, housed in the Natural State’s Department of Health, discriminates
against potential applicants by only accepting persons from certain racial groups for scholarship consideration.
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To qualify for the Minority Health Workforce Scholarship
, an applicant “must represent a racial minority population underrepresented in health workforce (i.e. Black American, Hispanic American, Native American/American Indian, Asian American and Marshallese),” according to the guidelines.
“In other words, Arkansas’s white and Arab students need not apply,” the lawsuit states.
“These scholarships are designed to recruit individuals into medicine, not based on academic achievements, but rather on skin color,” DNH chair Dr. Stanley Goldfarb told the Washington Examiner. “The rationale behind all this is that racial concordance between patients and physicians improves healthcare outcomes for black patients. This is an idea and a hypothesis for which there is no valid evidence.”
“What the public needs is well-trained physicians who have the academic and intellectual capacity to provide the highest level of healthcare,” he continued. “Skin color does not influence these characteristics and should not be the basis for acceptance into medical school.”
To apply
, students must “confirm that I am a racial minority,” supply information as to their race or ethnicity, and write an essay regarding “your most notable qualities, your knowledge about minority health, and examples of your demonstrated leadership ability.”
The stated purpose of the scholarship is to “help increase diversity in the state’s healthcare workforce.”
Despite the race-based guardrails set by the scholarship, the guidelines require that “approved institutions” from which applicants are applying must “not discriminate against applicants, or employees on the basis of race, color, religion, sex, age, handicap, or national origin, consistent with the provisions of applicable state and federal laws.”
“This scholarship clearly violates the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution,” Goldfarb said in a press release about the lawsuit. “The Arkansas Minority Health Commission is illegally excluding and discriminating against certain medical students and denying them opportunities based on their race, color, or national origin — the scholarship should be declared unconstitutional and promptly enjoined.”
DNH is asking the court to declare the scholarship’s current racial criteria violate the Fourteenth Amendment’s Equal Protection Clause and a permanent injunction barring the commission from “enforcing any and all racially discriminatory eligibility criteria.”
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The lawsuit was filed against Arkansas Minority Health Commission executive director Kenya L. Eddings in her official capacity.
The commission could not be reached for a request for comment.
