The American Alliance for Equal Rights and Do No Harm allege that the law firm of Buckfire & Buckfire PC wrongly denied three white students who applied for its medical and law school "diversity" scholarships.
The lawsuit, filed earlier this month, points out that the white students met the criteria for the scholarships. The national groups contend the diversity scholarships violate a federal law that bans race, color, and ethnicity as considerations in public or private contracts.
It also seeks nominal damages for the three clients and "any relief necessary to undo Defendant's past discrimination against" them.
"These scholarships not only violate the law, but they place immutable characteristics over merit," says Do No Harm's Dr. Kurt Miceli. "They require that applicants be a member of an ethnic, racial, or other minority group; otherwise, applicants who are white, in this case, must demonstrate a commitment to issues of diversity within their community."
He says the lawsuit aims to improve the scholarship program, and his organization wants to completely purge identity politics from medicine.
"Our goal is really to end the discrimination based on race," Dr. Miceli says. "The objective is not to end the scholarship program, but rather see that those scholarships are awarded based on lawful and legitimate grounds, as in merit rather than any such race-based consideration."
Lawrence Buckfire, president and lead trial attorney of the firm, believes the lawsuit is "frivolous" and motivated by political ideology. He has noted many other student scholarships are geared toward specific groups, such as members of certain religious denominations, "but those are not the scholarships that are being targeted."
