Before being tapped to be Vice President Kamala Harris' running mate, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz (D.) signed into law invoice that established racial quotas throughout the state's health department, from the requirement that two members of a pregnancy task force be “black or African-American” to rules governing the composition of a board of “equity in health”.

The legislation, which Walz signed last May, created race-based membership requirements for five separate committees: the Community Solutions Advisory Council, the Health Equity Leadership and Advisory Council, the Care Task Force Sanitària Equitativa, the Working Group on Pregnancy Health and substance use. Disorders and the African American Health Status Advisory Council, while establishing additional race-conscious programs. Legal experts who reviewed the quotas said they were clearly unconstitutional and would be easy pickings for a plaintiff.

“Anytime the government uses a racial classification without a compelling state interest, that's unconstitutional,” said Adam Mortara, the lead attorney for the plaintiffs in Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvardthe 2023 Supreme Court case that banned affirmative action in college admissions.

Some of the requirements Walz signed into law are very granular and involve multiple racial groups. The pregnancy and substance abuse council, for example, must include “two members who identify as black or African American,” “two members who identify as Native American,” and two additional members who are “tribal representatives appointed by Minnesota Indian Affairs.” Council.” Other councils have quotas for Hispanics, Asian Americans, “LGBTQIA+” people and the disabled.

It is unclear whether whites who “identify as” minorities are eligible for office. Walz and the Harris campaign did not respond to requests for comment.

The quotas stand in stark contrast to the image of an avuncular Midwestern moderate that Walz and his allies have tried to project since his launch in Philadelphia on Tuesday evening. Former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D., Calif.) described Walz as a “Democrat from America's heartland” with “halfway” politics. Others have noted that Walz, a former football coach who served in Congress from 2007 to 2019, had a voting record on the right from many House Democrats.

But his record as governor of Minnesota has been much more progressive. Walz signed laws allow abortion until the end of pregnancy, extend health insurance to illegal immigrantsi prevent the extradition of children who travel to the state seeking gender surgery. Following the death of George Floyd at the hands of police officers in Minneapolis, the state also became ground zero for the 2020 race riots and the wave of race-conscious initiatives that followed, including one triage system that rationed COVID drugs based on race.

Walz presided over this system, which prioritized “BIPOC” individuals for scarce therapies and gave more weight to race than to certain risk factors, as healthcare systems across the country were under strain from a new and highly contagious variant of the virus. The scheme was scrapped in January 2022 amid moral outrage and legal threats.

Since then, Walz has duly flagged the racial policies emanating from his state's activist class, which range from the legally dubious to the outlandish. In 2023, for example, he signed a law updating the Minnesota Human Rights Act to prohibit discrimination based on “hair texture” and other “racially associated traits,” including “hair styles such as braids, locs, and twists.” A few months later came the law mandating quotas for health department committees, most of which were established that year.

The quotas seem to have created some recruitment difficulties: An August job posting said the Health Equity Leadership and Advisory Council was seeking “three additional members to meet statutory requirements,” which include “representation” of nearly every protected class in the United States.

“To ensure the diversity of the board,” the post said, the health department “seeks applicants who identify as LGBTQ, Asian American, Pacific Islander, and/or have a disability.”

A separate “Equity Health Care Task Force” has identical hiring criteria, while a “health equity” grant program must target counties with “a higher proportion of black or African American communities , nonwhite Latino(a), LGBTQIA+, and disability communities,” according to the 2023 statute.

“This is clearly illegal,” said Dan Morenoff, executive director of the American Civil Rights Project, a conservative public interest law firm. “The law prohibits states from intentionally discriminating.”

There are also quotas within quotas, as well as spaces reserved for “racial equity” experts. The Community Solutions Advisory Council, which distributes grants for “healthy child development,” is to include three “Black Minnesotans of African heritage,” three Latinos, three Asians and three Native Americans. Within each group of three, one member must be a parent with a child under the age of eight. Other seats on the committee are reserved for people with “experience in racial equity” and “advocacy on behalf of communities of color and Indigenous communities.”

The African American Health Status Advisory Council must include both “African American persons who provide and receive health care services” and “African American high school or college students.” And a “Long COVID” grant program must prioritize communities “disproportionately affected” by the disease, such as “Black and African American, African American, Indian, Asian, and Pacific Islander immigrants, Latino(a) communities, LGBTQ+ and people with life disabilities”.

Grant recipients, the law adds, “may also address intersectionality within groups.”