A nonprofit that challenges diversity goals in medicine and has been active in efforts to ban gender-affirming health care for transgender youth has sued Louisiana over the selection process for the State Board of Medical Examiners, challenging a rule that certain members of the board must be racial minorities.
The nonprofit, Do No Harm, filed the lawsuit along with a conservative legal interest group, the Pacific Legal Foundation. The organizations touted the suit as part of an effort to "defeat race and sex board quotas in Louisiana and everywhere else” — a push that falls amid a broader attack by some conservatives on diversity initiatives in education, medicine and other fields.
The lawsuit filed Thursday in Louisiana's U.S. Western District Court takes aim at a state law requiring the governor to consider race in selecting appointees to the medical examiners board, which is the state's top regulatory and licensing body for health care workers.
The law encourages "blatant racial discrimination" and serves "no legitimate government purpose," attorneys argued in the complaint, which names Louisiana's governor as a defendant.
“Treating people according to immutable characteristics like race violates the very notion of equality before the law,” said Laura D’Agostino, an attorney for the Pacific Legal Foundation.
A spokesperson for Gov. John Bel Edwards, a Democrat who leaves office on Monday, directed a request for comment to the staff of Republican Gov.-elect Jeff Landry. A spokesperson for Landry did not immediately return a request for comment.
Do No Harm launched last year with the goal of opposing diversity initiatives in medicine but has since evolved into a leader in statehouses where lawmakers have sought to ban gender-affirming care for transgender youth. The group has fashioned model legislation that an Associated Press analysis found has been used in at least three states.
The nonprofit describes itself as a collection of doctors and others uniting to “protect healthcare from a radical, divisive, and discriminatory ideology.”
The law targeted by the lawsuit, Act 599, required Louisiana's governor to weigh candidates' ethnicity in naming appointees to the medical examiners' board.
The board's 10 members are appointed by the governor, who selects appointees from lists of suggested nominees compiled by medical schools and groups around the state.
The 2018 law, sponsored by state Sen. Katrina Jackson, D-Monroe, required pools of potential candidates submitted by four of those groups — LSU Health Sciences Center at New Orleans, LSU Health Sciences Center at Shreveport, the Louisiana Hospital Association and a list of "consumer" candidates — to contain people from minority backgrounds.
The law says the governor must select a person from a minority background from each of those four lists to serve on the board — but only every other year. The law does not bar minorities from being tapped in consecutive years.
Jackson did not return a phone message Friday; nor did staff for the state medical examiners' board.
Anti-diversity efforts pushed by Republicans have gained traction in Louisiana in recent years, though those efforts have focused mostly on education.
The state Republican Party passed a resolution last year calling on the Legislature to pass laws banning diversity, equity and inclusion at state universities. A separate legislative resolution to have colleges report diversity, equity and inclusion data drew blistering criticism from college leaders, with one calling the legislation racist before a House education panel. The committee killed the measure.
Landry did not comment publicly on either of those proposals.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
Editor's note, 1/6/2024: This story has been corrected to reflect that the Louisiana Board of Medical Examiners was not named as a defendant in the lawsuit.