Racial Restrictions on COVID Testing Unconstitutional

Racial Restrictions on COVID Testing Unconstitutional
(AP Photo/Rahmat Gul)
“New York City health officials have been using race to help decide how to allocate precious coronavirus testing resources,” reports the New York Post, citing “leaked emails from the agency.” Meanwhile, New York State is using race to restrict access to a limited supply of life-saving COVID treatments.

New York City has been putting coronavirus testing sites in mostly non-white neighborhoods, rather than mostly white neighborhoods. That is illegal racial discrimination. Just as bombing a bus because most of its passengers are black is racially discriminatory, giving an area benefits because of the race of most of its residents is racially discriminatory.  For example, an appeals court ruled that deliberately putting public housing in “predominantly white” areas was racially discriminatory and thus presumptively unconstitutional, in Walker v. City of Mesquite (1999). Similarly, the Supreme Court ruled that redrawing a city’s boundaries to exclude 99% of its black voters was unconstitutional, in Gomillion v. Lightfoot (1960).
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