Columbia, South Carolina – South Carolina Attorney General Alan Wilson has taken his fight against diversity, equity and inclusion mandates to the nation’s highest court, joining a 15-state friend-of-the-court brief before the U.S. Supreme Court in a case challenging California rules for medical education.
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At the center of the dispute is a California requirement tied to continuing medical education courses. Under the law, doctors must receive instruction on implicit bias to keep their medical licenses. The rule also affects the private citizens who prepare and teach those courses, requiring them to present the state’s position that implicit bias contributes to different health outcomes.
Wilson argues the issue is not only about medical training, but about speech. His office says California is forcing private instructors to promote DEI-related ideas even if those instructors do not agree with them.
“No government has the right to compel the speech of private citizens,” Attorney General Wilson said.
“So-called Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion practices are harmful to our society and have no place in the necessary training for medical professionals to administer care to people in need.”
The brief points to a recent U.S. Supreme Court decision involving a Colorado law that restricted what professional therapists could say from a particular viewpoint. In that case, the Court found the law violated the therapist’s constitutional speech rights.
South Carolina and the other states argue the same principle should work both ways: if states cannot silence professionals because of a viewpoint, they also cannot force professionals to express a viewpoint they reject.
California, according to the challenge, says continuing medical education instruction can be treated as government speech, even when the words come from private people.
South Carolina disputes that position and says the First Amendment does not allow government to place a message in the mouths of private speakers.
“DEI mandates stand completely opposed to the First Amendment,” Attorney General Wilson stated. “As Attorney General, I will continue fighting to put a stop to liberal DEI practices.”
Wilson joined Montana, Iowa, Alabama, Alaska, Georgia, Idaho, Indiana, Kansas, Louisiana, Nebraska, Oklahoma, Texas, West Virginia and the State Legislature of Arizona in filing the brief at the U.S. Supreme Court.
The case now places another DEI-related dispute before the Court, this time through the lens of medical training, professional speech and how far a state can go when attaching requirements to licensed fields.
