Thread by @America1stLegal

DEI DEFEATED🚨

AFL challenged a Biden-era DEI framework embedded in a federal kidney transplant program. 

The Trump Administration just dismantled it.

No American should ever be denied a transplant because of their race.

The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services just published a final rule stripping the Biden Administration’s DEI framework from the Increasing Organ Transplant Access (IOTA) Model.

One of the most aggressive attempts to inject race into organ transplantation is gone.

The IOTA Model was part of Biden’s “sweeping equity agenda” to confront the “unbearable human costs of systemic racism.”

It directed hospitals to create “Health Equity Plans” that sorted patients by race, ethnicity, and socioeconomic status and implemented race-based interventions to alter transplant outcomes.

In a system where every organ can mean life or death, Biden’s answer was DEI.

With at least 67 of the 103 hospitals still embracing DEI frameworks, the IOTA Model gave them a pathway to inject race-based preferences directly into the transplant process.

In November 2025, AFL filed a formal rulemaking petition demanding that the framework be repealed.

We argued the framework violated federal civil rights laws and conflicted with President Trump’s executive orders ending race-based decision-making in federally funded programs, and incentivized hospitals to engage in discrimination.

CMS addressed AFL’s petition and finalized the removal of the Biden Administration’s health equity framework from the IOTA Model.

Health Equity Plans? Gone.

Race-focused intervention strategies? Gone.

DEI performance measures? Gone.

AFL’s petition also exposed a serious transparency problem.

Hospitals could decline organs on a patient’s behalf — or change waitlist status — without ever telling them.

Combined with the Biden Administration’s DEI agenda, that created an obvious opportunity for abuse.

The new rule ends that secrecy.

The transplant system exists to save lives — not engineer racial outcomes.

Medical need should determine who receives a life-saving organ.

Not race.
Not ethnicity.
Not DEI.

That’s America First.

Read more here:

aflegal.org/press-release/…