A legal watchdog group has launched an investigation into an alleged effort by the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) to “prioritize organ transplants based on skin color.” The Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA), an agency of HHS, is currently overhauling the nation’s organ transplant system with a plan to strengthen “equity,” among other things.
“HHS is unlawfully injecting race and national origin into the HRSA Organ Procurement and Transplantation Network (OPTN),” America First Legal (AFL) said in a press release. “No American should be denied a lifesaving transplant because of the color of their skin.”
AFL, a nonprofit legal group formed by former senior Trump White House advisor Stephen Miller, has filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request for records from HHS, HRSA, and the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS).
Specifically, the watchdog is asking for records using any one of the following terms: “discrimination,” “discriminatory,” “race,” “racial,” “ethnicity,” “color,” “BIPOC,” “Asian,” “Indigenous,” “Black,” “Brown,” or “White” and any one of the following terms: “organ,” “transplant,” “transplantation,” “donor,” “donation,” “Organ Procurement and Transplantation Network,” “OPTN,” “United Network for Organ Sharing,” “UNOS,” “equity”, or “kidney.”