Kaiser Permanente Medical School Associate Professor Files Discrimination Lawsuit

LOS ANGELES, Aug. 30, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- On Monday, August 22, Dr. Derrick Morton filed a lawsuit in Los Angeles against Kaiser Permanente School of Medicine (KPSOM) for creating a hostile work environment for black doctors, faculty, staff and students at the medical school and for abandoning its stated values of equity and inclusion in medicine and medical education after recruiting black doctors and academics from across the country to teach at KPSOM on the basis of that stated mission.

Dr. Morton's suit follows Dr. Aysha Khoury's lawsuit against KPSOM for race and gender discrimination and harassment, as well as the departure of most of the other Black faculty and senior leadership present in the School's opening year.

The Kaiser Permanente J. Bernard Tyson School of Medicine ("KPSOM") lures the best and the brightest Black doctors and scientists from across the nation to join the KPSOM faculty with the false promise that they will be afforded unique opportunities for Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion ("DEI") leadership, academic freedom, and faculty partnership status in building an institution committed to ending the legacies of inequality in medical education and patient care. Black doctors and scientists at the height of their professional power make tremendous personal and professional sacrifices based on KPSOM's with the alleged false promise.

Derrick Morton, Ph.D., is a Black biologist and former KPSOM Assistant Professor recruited by KPSOM at the beginning of a thriving career in Atlanta. Dr. Morton was traumatized by KPSOM's alleged pervasive hostility against Black professionals and medical students. Dr. Morton was personally downleveled and suffered retaliation from KPSOM supervisors for being Black. Dr.Morton witnessed supervisors ostracize, isolate, and fire Dr. Aysha Khoury because she is Black.  He witnessed White supervisors demote, isolate, and constructively discharge the DEI Associate Dean because he is Black. Dr. Morton witnessed and experienced anti-Black animus at KPSOM that was so pervasive and chilling that he and his Black colleagues could not associate with each other or with Black students for fear of being blacklisted, according to the complaint.

KPSOM, while exploiting Dr. Morton's talent, reputation and diversity and inclusion credentials, has subjected Dr. Morton to racial trauma arising from discriminatory employment decisions and a workplace culture that disrespects, undermines, disproportion disciplines and ousts African American faculty on the basis of race, according to the complaint.

In medicine, the racial empathy gap manifests distinctly for Black patients, leading to uniquely perverse outcomes. Half of White medical trainees and a quarter of practicing physicians wrongly believe Black people have thicker skin or less sensitive nerve endings than White people. Consequently, Black patients are much less likely to be given pain medication for severe pain than white patients. If you're a child having abdominal pain because of appendicitis, the chances of obtaining adequate pain medication goes down by 80% if you are Black compared to if you're White. Pervasive racism in health care has caused a Black Women's Health Crisis. Black women are four times more likely than white women to die of child-birth related illnesses and black newborns are three times more likely to die if they are delivered by a white physicians. If you're a Black woman, who has reached the heights of education and is comfortable socioeconomically you have a higher chance of dying in pregnancy and delivery, and your baby has a higher chance of dying in pregnancy and delivery than anyone else, including any woman of any other race who has not finished high school.

These jarring disparities highlight the need for greater diversity in medicine- a field where only five percent of physicians are black, representing a rise of only 2% since 1910. A wealth of research data exists supporting the positive link between access to Black health professionals and the quality of care and health outcomes for Black patients.

Plaintiff's attorney Lisa Holder contends, "KPSOM's pattern of undervaluing and discarding black academics and physician educators is uniquely disturbing when placed in this systemic context."

Plaintiff's attorney Nathan M. Smith, partner at Brown, Neri, Smith & Khan LLP, stated, "this incident not only violates KPSOM's stated mission of equity in medicine, it also violates California public policy guidelines for bias elimination in medical training."

Drs. Morton and Khoury are among the expanding group of black doctors whose stories have spawned a movement that centers black physicians in the struggle for race-gender equality. On Friday morning August 26, 2022, doctors and medical students marched to KPSOM to protest the marginalization of black physicians, academics, and medical students as part of the kickoff campaign for #BLACKDOCSBELONG.

SOURCE Brown, Neri, Smith & Khan LLP