{"id":1642886,"date":"2022-09-16T13:19:58","date_gmt":"2022-09-16T17:19:58","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/?p=1642886"},"modified":"2022-09-16T13:22:27","modified_gmt":"2022-09-16T17:22:27","slug":"pfizer-hit-with-lawsuit-over-fellowship-that-excludes-whites-and-asians","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/pfizer-hit-with-lawsuit-over-fellowship-that-excludes-whites-and-asians\/","title":{"rendered":"Pfizer Hit With Lawsuit Over Fellowship That Excludes Whites and Asians"},"content":{"rendered":"<aside class=\"mashsb-container mashsb-main mashsb-stretched\"><div class=\"mashsb-box\"><div class=\"mashsb-count mash-medium\" style=\"&quot;\"><div class=\"counts mashsbcount\">22<\/div><span class=\"mashsb-sharetext\">SHARES<\/span><\/div><div class=\"mashsb-buttons\"><a class=\"mashicon-facebook mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/sharer.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.conservativenewsdaily.net%2Fbreaking-news%2Fpfizer-hit-with-lawsuit-over-fellowship-that-excludes-whites-and-asians%2F\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Facebook<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-twitter mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/intent\/tweet?text=&amp;url=https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/?p=1642886&amp;via=ConservNewsDly\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Twitter<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-subscribe mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"#\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Subscribe<\/span><\/a><div class=\"onoffswitch2 mash-medium mashsb-noshadow\" style=\"display:none\"><\/div><\/div>\n            <\/div>\n                <div style=\"clear:both\"><\/div><\/aside>\n            <!-- Share buttons by mashshare.net - Version: 4.0.47--><div>\n\t\t\t<span class=\"article-category\"><a class=\"\" href=\"https:\/\/freebeacon.com\/latest-news\/\">Latest News<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"article-excerpt\">Lawsuit comes after civil rights experts slammed program as clear-cut violation of federal law<\/p>\n<figure class=\"post-thumbnail-container relative lg:mr-24 w-full my-4 mb-8\"><figcaption class=\"absolute text-white p-4 w-full text-right text-xs bottom-0 bg-black opacity-75\">\n\t\t\t\tScreenshot\t\t\t<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>\t\t\t<span class=\"text-gray text-xs md:text-lg\"><a href=\"https:\/\/freebeacon.com\/author\/aaron-sibarium\/\" title=\"Posts by Aaron Sibarium\" class=\"author url fn text-red-700\" rel=\"author\">Aaron Sibarium<\/a> \u2022 September 16, 2022 1:07 pm<\/span><\/p><\/div>\n<div>\n<p>Pfizer is being sued for excluding whites and Asians from its prestigious &#8220;Breakthrough Fellowship,&#8221; a nine-year program that includes a fully funded master&#8217;s degree and guaranteed employment with the pharmaceutical giant.<\/p>\n<p>The <a href=\"https:\/\/freebeacon.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/09\/2022.09.15.-Doc-1-Verified-complaint.pdf\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">lawsuit<\/a>, filed on Thursday by the medical advocacy group Do No Harm, says that the program&#8217;s exclusionary criteria violate five different civil rights laws: the Civil Rights Act of 1866, which bans racial discrimination in contracting; New York City and New York State&#8217;s human rights laws, which ban race discrimination in internships, training programs, and employment; Title VI of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, which bans race discrimination in federally funded entities; and Section 1557 of the Affordable Care Act, which bans race discrimination in federally funded health care programs.<\/p>\n<p>Because Pfizer accepts reimbursements from the government, the lawsuit says, &#8220;All its operations\u2014including the fellowship\u2014are covered by&#8221; Title VI and Section 1557. That means the company could lose federal money if it does not change its application criteria, which explicitly restrict the Breakthrough Fellowship to &#8220;Black\/African American, Latino\/Hispanic, and Native American&#8221; students.<\/p>\n<p>The plaintiffs are two Ivy League students who meet the academic requirements for the fellowship but cannot apply because of their race. They are asking a New York district court to block Pfizer from selecting fellows for the 2023 class and to force the fellowship to use race-blind criteria going forward.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Racial discrimination is fundamentally \u2018immoral,&#8217; \u2018inherently wrong,&#8217; and \u2018destructive of democratic society,'&#8221; the lawsuit reads. It &#8220;demeans us all the same even when it is done by private entities.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>The fellowship&#8217;s application criteria\u2013hailed as a &#8220;bold move&#8221; on the company&#8217;s website\u2013sparked outrage from civil rights experts, five of whom <a href=\"https:\/\/freebeacon.com\/latest-news\/no-whites-allowed-pfizer-fellowship-flagrantly-violates-the-law-lawyers-say\/\">told the <em>Washington Free Beacon<\/em><\/a> in August that a lawsuit against Pfizer would almost certainly succeed. Adam Mortara, a prominent conservative attorney, called the program &#8220;flagrantly illegal&#8221;; Gail Heriot, a member of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, called it a &#8220;clear case of liability&#8221; under federal law. Though Do No Harm&#8217;s complaint does not invoke Title VII, the federal statute banning race discrimination in employment, all five attorneys said that the fellowship likely violates that law as well.<\/p>\n<p>Pfizer did not respond to a request for comment.<\/p>\n<p>The lawsuit comes as a growing number of corporations face legal complaints over their race-conscious policies. In July, a white woman filed a <a href=\"https:\/\/freebeacon.com\/latest-news\/amazon-faces-suit-over-10k-offer-made-exclusively-to-black-latinx-and-native-american-entrepreneurs\/\">class-action lawsuit against Amazon<\/a> over a program that gives minority entrepreneurs a $10,000 dollar stipend to launch their own delivery start-ups. And in August, a group of Starbucks shareholders <a href=\"https:\/\/www.americancivilrightsproject.org\/blog\/filings\/starbucks-shareholder-sues-to-stop-its-civil-rights-violations-from-wasting-corporate-assets\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">sued the coffee giant<\/a> over a policy that pegs executive pay to workforce diversity. Other companies, including <a href=\"https:\/\/freebeacon.com\/latest-news\/google-ibm-quietly-backtrack-on-race-conscious-fellowships-in-wake-of-free-beacon-reports\/\">Google and IBM<\/a>, have scrapped race-conscious policies amid legal concerns.<\/p>\n<p>Do No Harm is also demanding that Pfizer stop promoting its fellowship on the grounds that New York State law forbids discrimination in advertising. In an informational video about the program, Pfizer promises 100 fellows &#8220;from underrepresented groups&#8221; by 2025.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/freebeacon.com\/?attachment_id=1637313\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-1637313\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-1637313\" src=\"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/09\/unnamed-10-e1663346868472.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"736\" height=\"457\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Latest News Lawsuit comes after civil rights experts slammed program as clear-cut violation of federal law  Screenshot  Aaron Sibarium \u2022 September 16, 2022 1:07 pm<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":184,"featured_media":1642889,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mo_disable_npp":"","fifu_image_url":"","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1642886","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1642886","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/184"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1642886"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1642886\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1642889"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1642886"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1642886"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1642886"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}