FIRST ON THE DAILY SIGNAL—The American Medical Association Foundation website no longer includes listings for race-based scholarships after a medical watchdog suggested the foundation should lose its tax-exempt status for racial discrimination. Do No Harm, a watchdog group of doctors, nurses, and other medical professionals, aims to expose racial discrimination, transgender ideology, and other divisive practices in medicine. Do No Harm sent a letter to the IRS earlier this month, noting that multiple AMA Foundation scholarships explicitly state that only students of certain races qualify. Last week, the scholarships disappeared from the AMA Foundation’s website. “The AMA Foundation appears to have removed the discriminatory scholarships at the heart of our IRS complaint—a tacit admission that our concerns were warranted,” Dr. Kurt Miceli, a psychiatrist and chief medical officer at Do No Harm, told The Daily Signal. “However, we believe the government is still obligated to investigate to confirm that these programs have truly been eliminated and not simply rebranded and reconstituted,” Miceli added. The AMA did not respond to The Daily Signal’s request for comment by publication time. The Complaint Against the AMA The complaint asked the IRS to investigate the AMA Foundation over “invidious racial discrimination” in its Physicians of Tomorrow Scholarship program. Three scholarship programs had been listed on the AMA Foundation website on Feb. 24, but no longer appeared on the site as of April 17, after Do No Harm’s letter. The listing for the Dr. Richard Allen Williams & Genita Evangelista Johnson/Association of Black Cardiologists Scholarship offered $5,000 to medical students interested in cardiology, but only if they are “African American/Black.” The Underrepresented in Medicine Scholarship offered $10,000 to winners, who must be “African American/Black, Latine/Hispanic or Indigenous (American Indian, Native Hawaiian, or Alaska Native).” The Patricia L. Austin Family Physicians of Tomorrow Scholarship also offered $10,000, but stated that winners must be “of Eastern European descent.” Why It May Be Illegal “Each of these racist exclusions is repugnant to our civil rights laws and ‘the congressional intent underlying [federal law],’” the complaint stated. It cited Bob Jones University v. United States (1983), in which the Supreme Court ruled that the IRS had rightly revoked the 501(c)(3) status of Bob Jones University because it forbade interracial dating and marriage. The AMA Foundation’s racially discriminatory scholarships are “sufficient grounds for the IRS to revoke the AMA Foundation’s tax-exempt status under 26 U.S.C. §501(c)(3),” the complaint stated. It quoted the Bob Jones Supreme Court finding that “racially discriminatory” institutions “cannot be viewed as conferring a public benefit within the ‘charitable’ concept” of the common law. The complaint also cited Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard (2023), in which the Supreme Court found that racial preferences in college admissions—often referred to as “affirmative action”—constituted racial discrimination in violation of the equal protection clause of the 14th Amendment. If Supreme Court precedent were not enough, President Donald Trump’s “executive orders also leave the [IRS] with no discretion” on the matter, the complaint claimed. “The president has rescinded prior executive orders that agencies had invoked to justify race-based classifications in the name of ‘equity.’” Trump’s Jan. 20, 2025, order directed federal agencies to terminate “all discriminatory programs,” including those related to “diversity, equity, and inclusion,” as well as policies “allowing or encouraging” third parties “to engage in workforce balancing based on race.” Do No Harm asked the IRS to open an investigation unless the AMA Foundation altered its policies. Miceli praised the Trump administration’s efforts to remove politics from medicine, but argued that this represents an ongoing problem. “While the administration has made enormous progress in stamping out biased political ideologies in medicine, it is clear the AMA and other establishment medical organizations require continued scrutiny to ensure illegal and immoral racial discrimination is eradicated from the study and practice of medicine in America,” he concluded. AMA Foundation IRS ComplaintDownload