Cleveland Clinic Accused Of Racial Discrimination Over Health Clinic For ‘Minority Men’

An Ohio-based medical provider has been accused of engaging in illegal discrimination with several race-based programs, according to a federal civil rights complaint filed Wednesday. 

The Wisconsin Institute for Law and Liberty (WILL) filed the complaint with the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services over two initiatives from the Cleveland Health Clinic focused on providing medical care solely to “racial and ethnic minorities.” The complaint was filed on behalf of the group, Do No Harm, an organization dedicated to depoliticizing medicine.

The initiatives in question are the “Minority Stroke Program” and the “Minority Men’s Health Center.” The complaint says that both programs “have discriminated, and are currently discriminating, against certain members of Do No Harm,” which WILL says violates Title VI of the Civil Rights Act and the Affordable Care Act.

“Race discrimination is a defining feature of these programs; and this discrimination is present and ongoing,” a copy of the complaint shared with The Daily Wire says. “Everyday people in search of help — regarding stroke and other cardiovascular conditions, men’s health conditions, and mental health issues, and encountering Cleveland Clinic’s racial preferences for its special programming — are faced with the fact that the clinic does not view, prioritize, promote, or otherwise care for all patients equally, in the same manner, without regard to race.”

The Cleveland Clinic has over 48,000 employees across 14 affiliated hospitals and 20 family centers in northeast Ohio. It also has several affiliated hospitals in Florida and a cancer center in Nevada. The Clinic did not respond to a request for comment.

The complaint was filed as part of WILL’s “Equality Under the Law” project, which challenges diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) programs across the country.

According to the Cleveland Clinic, the minority stroke program is “focused on preventing and treating stroke in racial and ethnic minorities” and increasing “stroke awareness among minority groups in order to lower stroke rates and improve stroke outcomes.”

The minority stroke program was launched in 2019 and has expanded to specifically target parts of Cleveland “where 90% of residents are Black,” according to the Clinic. 

The Minority Men’s Health Center is focused on “minority health concerns,” and says it helps doctors “more effectively address health disparities in minority populations.”

The complaint says that the racially focused aspect of the programs takes away from the focus of medical care. 

“Instead, a racially motivated focus has infected these programs — creating a racial dichotomy under which patients are prioritized and cared for, and displacing the otherwise laudable goal of helping humanity equally, without regard to one’s race,” the complaint says. 

In a letter to officials at the Cleveland Clinic notifying them of the complaint, lawyers with WILL said that they would withdraw the complaint if the clinic opens up its programs.

“Should you determine to revise these programs to remove their racial motivation and focus in favor of an approach that equally prioritizes, promotes, pursues, and includes all patients, without regard to race in compliance with federal anti-discrimination laws, DNH will immediately withdraw its complaint,” wrote lawyers Cara Tolliver and Daniel Lennington.

Dr. Stanley Goldfarb, the chairman of Do No Harm, told The Daily Wire that the initiatives would lead to a lack of trust by patients for the system. 

“This is just wrong. I think it’s important that they have outreach,” he said. “But to start separating people based on race and having them go to one clinic if they’re black and another clinic if they’re white is not a good idea.”

He added that these kinds of initiatives were being introduced for executives to virtue signal and coming down from DEI offices.

Goldfarb said that he expects the complaint to be successful, citing a recent settlement the group reached with the Association of University Women, in which the university agreed to stop excluding white women from being eligible for certain awards. 

“We’re going to fight with them,” Goldfarb told The Daily Wire. “We’ll go right to the highest courts in the land if we have to because these programs are wrong.”