Tennessee’s Racial Podiatry Rule

The Supreme Court’s ruling this summer in Students for Fair Admissions ended racial preferences among college applicants, but the task of extending that legal precedent for colorblindness is only beginning. Medicine might be one field to watch next, since it’s a place where the use of racial selection criteria persists under state mandates.

On Wednesday a group called Do No Harm, which says it’s “dedicated to eliminating racial discrimination in healthcare,” plans to file a federal lawsuit challenging Tennessee’s rules for appointments to more than 70 state boards, according to the draft complaint. That includes the Board of Podiatric Medical Examiners, created in 1931, whose six members are chosen by the Governor to regulate podiatry practice.