A prominent conservative legal group, America First Legal (AFL), has escalated its challenge against what it describes as unlawful federal policies by filing a civil rights complaint with the U.S. Department of Justice. Their target: Washington University School of Medicine (WashU) in St. Louis. According to AFL’s press release, the complaint demands an immediate investigation and enforcement action, alleging that WashU is running one of the nation’s most ‘egregious and unlawful’ Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) frameworks. AFL contends that WashU, as a leading medical school and a major recipient of federal funds, has a fundamental duty to maintain merit-based standards and fairness in its educational processes. However, the complaint claims the university has instead interwoven race, sex, and identity-based preferences into every facet of its medical programs—spanning admissions, residency placements, faculty hiring, curriculum development, and even governance.
Allegations of Race and Identity-Based Preferences
The press release asserts that WashU actively promotes ‘engineered racial outcomes,’ effectively sidelining traditional merit-based evaluations. Instead, the institution allegedly favors quotas, targeted pipeline programs, and ideological indoctrination. AFL claims that access to opportunities at the school is contingent on race and sex, fostering a culture of ‘ideological compliance’ among its students, residents, and faculty members.
“WashU has transformed its medical school into a DEI indoctrination training camp,” the group’s statement declares. It further alleges that students, residents, and faculty are compelled to internalize and enforce the university’s specific ideological agenda. AFL argues that these practices surpass the severity of those observed at institutions like Harvard or UNC, citing that the purported discrimination permeates every aspect of medical education and clinical training.
Legal Basis for the Complaint
AFL’s legal challenge is grounded in a broad array of legal frameworks, including the U.S. Constitution, Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, Title IX, Section 1557 of the Affordable Care Act, established Supreme Court precedent, and executive orders issued by former President Trump. The complaint specifically charges that WashU is circumventing the Supreme Court’s landmark 2023 decision in Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard, which outlawed race-based admissions, by employing a ‘holistic review process.’
This ‘holistic’ method allegedly assesses applicants’ ‘experiences, attributes, and metrics’ against internal institutional objectives, effectively allowing race and other identity markers to unduly influence the selection process. Furthermore, AFL asserts that WashU has reinterpreted the concept of merit to specifically tackle ‘systemic racism,’ pre-screening applicant pools through various pathway and pipeline programs, and incorporating similar preferential treatments into residency placements.
DEI Programs and Residency Initiatives
The press release details several specific examples that AFL deems illicit:
- WashU manages over 30 distinct pathway programs designed to guide students from middle school through to doctoral studies. These programs explicitly filter participants based on race, sex, and other immutable characteristics.
- The Internal Medicine Residency Program reportedly saw a significant increase in its proportion of ‘underrepresented in medicine’ residents, jumping from 9.7% to 27% within a mere three years. This increase is attributed to race-based recruitment initiatives.
- AFL further alleges that the DEI office actively influences curriculum development and institutional governance, thereby fostering ideological compliance among both faculty and students.
Concerns About Merit and Patient Care
AFL firmly argues that these policies prioritize identity over genuine academic and professional achievement, thereby putting students who have committed years to rigorous medical training at a disadvantage. The group maintains that such approaches do not cultivate superior doctors; instead, they produce ‘activists in white coats’ who might inadvertently bring ideological biases into their clinical practice, potentially compromising patient care standards.
Raising Questions About DEI in Schools
This complaint casts a critical spotlight on the role of DEI programs within federally funded institutions, questioning whether these initiatives truly adhere to existing civil rights legislation. AFL characterizes WashU as a prime national illustration of systemic overreach, suggesting that the university’s current practices could have far-reaching implications for medical training, faculty recruitment, and patient care standards nationwide.
As of now, the Department of Justice has not issued a statement regarding the complaint. This legal action has the potential to pave the way for a much broader examination of DEI practices not only within medical schools but across the entire landscape of higher education institutions.