Published June 9, 2026
On June 9, 2026, EPPC Scholars Rachel N. Morrison of the Administrative State Accountability Project and Dr. Aaron Kheriaty and Devorah Goldman of the Bioethics, Technology, and Human Flourishing Program submitted a public comment to the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) in response to a Proposed Rule involving various Medicaid regulations.
The comment focuses on a proposed regulation prohibiting unlawful discrimination in approved medical residency training programs and approved nursing and allied health education programs, including using protected characteristics as selection criteria for employment, program participation, resource allocation, or similar activities, opportunities, or benefits.
The scholars stressed the importance of nondiscrimination requirements given “the pervasive focus on diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) in medical education by the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education (ACGME) and under the prior administration.” The comment provided examples of ways the ACGME pushes DEI and explained why DEI is not only bad policy but also can violate federal civil rights laws and the U.S. Constitution.
The scholars also supported the proposed regulation’s inclusion of conscience protections for abortion and encouraged CMS to adopt additional criteria to further protect rights of conscience and religious freedom in medical training and education programs.
Finally, the scholars pointed out that the ACGME is a medical education monopoly and urged CMS to “consider ways to break up the current medical education accreditation monopoly, for example, by a willingness to fund programs that meet federal requirements even if they are not ACGME accredited or by opening the field for new accreditation agencies to compete with the ACGME.”
Rachel N. Morrison is a Fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center, where she directs EPPC’s Administrative State Accountability Project, which advocates for an authentic understanding of the human person in the drafting, implementation, and rollback of government regulations.
