www.dailywire.com
Children’s Hospital Accused Of Promoting Racially Discriminatory Scholarships, Internships
The Wisconsin Institute for Law and Liberty (WILL) filed a civil rights complaint on Wednesday against Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center over several scholarship programs the legal firm says illegally discriminate based on race and sex.
The complaint, filed with the Office of Civil Rights for the Department of Health and Human Services, took aim at four specific programs offered by the hospital to “underrepresented groups.” WILL said the programs violate Title VI of the Civil Rights Act, which prohibits federal dollars from going toward racially discriminatory programs, and asked federal officials to launch an investigation.
“Despite a national shortage of healthcare workers, some major healthcare systems in America still want to use taxpayer funds to discriminate on the basis of race and sex against otherwise eligible candidates,” WILL lawyer Cara Tolliver told The Daily Wire. “This is not just illegal, it’s nonsensical. The healthcare system cannot care for patients effectively, safely and efficiently, when medical education and training programs prioritize irrelevant identity politics over individual merit and essential qualities.”
The programs in question are the William K. Schubert Minority Nursing Scholarship, the Jean Turner Minority Scholarship for Medical Imaging Technology, the Biomedical Research Internship for Minority Students (BRIMS), and the Administrative Fellowship Program.
According to the hospital, the goal of the William K. Schubert Minority Nursing Scholarship, which provides $2,750 in tuition aid to pediatric nursing students, is to “increase the diversity of registered nurses.” Applicants must be from an “underrepresented group,” which excludes white women.
The Ohio hospital defines those underrepresented as “male nurses/nursing students and nurses/nursing students who are American Indian or Alaskan Native, Black or African American, Hawaiian Native or other Pacific Islander, Hispanic or Latino, and/or Asian including Chinese, Filipino, Japanese, Korean, Asian Indian, Thai, or Vietnamese/Southeast Asian.”
WILL said that this program disfavors “students who are not men and do not meet certain racial criteria — if these race- and sex-based barriers do not disqualify such students from the Hospital’s ‘minority’ scholarship entirely.”
Similarly, the Jean Turner Minority Scholarship stipulates that recipients must be from an “under-represented ethnic group in the field of radiology.” This scholarship can cover up to $5,000 in tuition for a school year and was created “to create opportunities for people of color in the field of radiology.”
RELATED: Major Medical Association Pushes For DEI ‘To Be Embedded In Everything’
Another initiative WILL argues is discriminatory is the Biomedical Research In Medicine and Science (BRIMS) program, designed for “underrepresented” populations to gain summer experience in a lab doing academic research.
“While candidates meeting the racial criteria can immediately qualify for BRIMS, candidates who do not meet the program’s racial criteria must either find some other way than skin color to demonstrate their disadvantage, or lose their eligibility altogether,” WILL wrote in its complaint.
The hospital’s “Administrative Fellowship” program “strongly encourages applicants from historically underrepresented groups in healthcare — including diverse groups based on race, ethnicity, sexual orientation, and gender identity.”
This program allows recipients to gain experience running operations at a children’s hospital and academic center.
“Treating individuals as racial or gender archetypes to ‘fix’ group differences is beyond the remit of a healthcare entity,” WILL wrote of the programs. “And in any event, such discrimination is illegal: Title VI and the [Affordable Care Act] do not permit federal funding recipients, like the Hospital, to operate their education, training and scholarship opportunities in this manner.”
CHECK OUT THE DAILY WIRE HOLIDAY GIFT GUIDE
WILL also highlighted how the hospital keeps a running total of its workforce “diversity” on its website, showing how many men vs. women are on staff and how many white vs. “POC” (people of color) work at the institution.
Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center did not respond to a request for comment from The Daily Wire.
Federal officials previously opened an investigation into another Ohio hospital, the Cleveland Clinic, after WILL demanded a civil rights probe into the provider’s “Minority Stroke Program” and “Minority Men’s Health Center.”