The Hurley Medical Center in Flint, Michigan is being sued for accommodating the request made by a parent that no African Americans tend to his newborn. The father, who allegedly sported a swastika tattoo, alerted a nurse that blacks were not to care for his baby.
To comply with the father’s request, nurse Tonya Battle, who was caring for the child in the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU) of the hospital was removed or reassigned from tending to the child. A news video reporting on the incident can be found here. Battle is now suing the hospital. According to her lawsuit, hospital staff complied with the father’s demand, posting a note next to the baby’s name on the assignment clipboard: “No African American nurse to take care of baby.”
Nurse Battle’s lawsuit claims that she was deeply shocked and offended–she’s worked for at the hospital for 25 years. Professor Kimani Paul-Emile writes that such requests–based on race or ethnicity–are not unusual at U.S. hospitals and medical clinics. See her article, Patients’ Racial Preferences and the Medical Culture of Accommodation, which is published in the U.C.L.A. Law Review here. However, such instances of using racial preferences in the medical setting raise questions about the permissibility of such practices–not only as a legal matter, but also as matters of health and bioethics. Some patients believe that the quality of their care is enhanced when provided by someone represented by their ethnic group; some even fear that their healthcare is compromised when delivered by medical staff outside of their ethnic group. Should the law tolerate these forms of discrimination? What about if racial perceptions have a positive placebo effect? Post a comment.
