2 weeks Ago By Mark J. Perry
Vice President Kamala Harris and Tim Walz have staked much of their campaign on defending the United States Constitution. But as governor of Minnesota, Walz brazenly violated the Constitution. Last year, he empowered a state commission to discriminate on the basis of race, a blatantly unconstitutional act.
Minnesotans, and every American, should worry that a Harris-Walz administration would push similar racial discrimination nationwide. The center of this story is Minnesota’s Health Equity Advisory Leadership Council , or HEAL Council. While it was initially created within the state Health Department in 2017, before Walz was elected governor, he enshrined the council in state law in 2023.
That’s the problem: Walz signed a law that explicitly requires the council to meet racial quotas. ADVERTISEMENT The language Walz approved couldn’t be more clear: “The Council consists of 18 members ..
. who will provide representation from” specific groups. The law then lays out exactly what communities the council must draw members from, including African Americans, Pacific Islanders, Latina/o/x, and American Indians.
The council is also legally required to have representatives from disability communities and LGBTQ communities. This law is unconstitutional on its face. The equal-protection clause of the Constitution’s 14th Amendment explicitly states that no state may “deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.
” In layman’s terms, that means the government can’t discriminate by race or any other characteristic, because that necessarily involves unequal treatment. The whole point of that language, passed in the wake of the Civil War, was to fight and ultimately end racial discrimination. Gov.
Walz apparently thinks racial discrimination is acceptable and even praiseworthy. The HEAL Council’s mission is to address “persistent disparities across various ethnic, racial, and regional groups.” No question, that’s a worthy objective.
What Minnesotan or American doesn’t want to ensure that everyone gets world-class health care? But no matter how just that goal is, racial discrimination is unjust and unacceptable as a means of trying to reach it. I speak from personal experience. I work for a health care nonprofit that advocates for excellent and equal medical care for every American, regardless of race.
That’s why, earlier this year, I applied for one of the HEAL Council’s open board positions. Turns out, I’m not who the council is looking for, based on the plain text of the law that Walz signed. I’m a straight, white, cisgendered male.
But my race, sexual orientation, and gender identity shouldn’t matter. Not just because that type of discrimination is unconstitutional, but also because discrimination means ignoring insights and ideas from entire groups of people. If we’re going to tackle health disparities in Minnesota, we should solicit solutions from everyone, not just people with certain skin colors, sexual orientations, and gender identities.
I’m hopeful that Minnesota’s HEAL Council soon faces a lawsuit. But I’m also deeply concerned for what the HEAL Council says about Walz. Is he really going to fight racial discrimination in a presidential administration? I highly doubt it.
Our governor and Harris both have a history of promoting the ideology of health equity. Equity is profoundly different from equal treatment, and as we’ve seen in the administration of President Joe Biden and elsewhere , equity can actually mean providing different levels of care to patients of different races. ADVERTISEMENT There’s another name for that: racism.
And it’s as unconstitutional and immoral at the federal level as it is here in Minnesota. Too bad we have a governor-turned-vice presidential candidate who apparently sees nothing wrong with such discrimination — and even may think it’s right. Mark J.
Perry of Mendota Heights, Minnesota, is a senior fellow at the nonprofit Do No Harm (donoharmmedicine.org), which is based in Glen Allen, Virginia. He wrote this exclusively for the News Tribune.
The views expressed here are his own..
