On Tuesday, a think tank based in Washington, D.C. filed a federal complaint against the state of New Hampshire, claiming that the state government prioritized non-White residents for COVID vaccines over White people, according to Fox News.
The complaint, filed by Boyden Gray and Associates, and the Ethics and Public Policy Center (EPPC), requests that the Department of Health and Human Services’ (HHS) Office of Civil Rights (OCR) conduct an investigation into the matter and seek “a binding voluntary resolution agreement with all the guilty parties.” The complaint also requests that the OCR “include appropriate remedial action, training, and ongoing monitoring of respondents by your office.”
At the center of this complaint is a 28-year-old White man living in New Hampshire, whose name was redacted from the publicly-released version of the complaint to protect his identity. The man claims that he was at a greater risk of catching the Chinese coronavirus, but was informed by an automatic recording that appointments were already “fully subscribed” for non-White people.
“On April 2, 2021, he called the Public Health Council of the Upper Valley to request a COVID-19 vaccination appointment,” the complaint explains. “He was told through a recorded message that appointments were ‘fully subscribed for people of color.’” This claim falls in line with efforts made by the New Hampshire state government to focus specifically on minorities in order to provide aid to “disproportionately impacted populations.”
“No one seeking medical care should ever be sent to the back of the line because of their race, but that is exactly what the state of New Hampshire did with COVID-19 vaccinations,” said EPPC policy analyst Rachel Morrison. “HHS must investigate and hold New Hampshire accountable for its blatantly illegal discrimination.”
The end goal of the complaint is to ensure that HHS cut off all for the New Hampshire state and public health council until it can receive guarantees, in writing, that no resident of New Hampshire will be discriminated against on the basis of race.