The American Chemical Society’s headquarters building in Washington, DC
A conservative advocacy group is suing the American Chemical Society over a program that the group claims amounts to discrimination against students of some racial backgrounds.
On March 5, Do No Harm filed a complaint against ACS in a federal court in Washington, DC, for operating the ACS Scholars Program.
Do No Harm, a Virginia-based nonprofit set up in April 2022 with the aim of keeping identity politics out of medical practice, education, and research, says it filed the complaint on behalf of a high school senior who is qualified for the program except for its race and ethnicity requirement.
The ACS Scholars Program awards scholarships to students attending or planning to attend a US university who belong to racial and ethnic groups that are historically underrepresented in the chemical sciences. The program’s website says it is for “African American/Black, Native American/American Indian and Hispanic or Latino undergraduate students pursuing bachelor’s degrees in the chemical sciences, and planning careers in the chemical sciences.”
ACS has run the program since 1995, awarding over $1 million to more than 300 students every year. Each recipient is awarded up to $5,000 per academic year. To date, more than 3,500 students have received funds under the program.
Since the program is open only to students who are from Black, Hispanic or Latino, or Indigenous backgrounds—and not those from White or Asian backgrounds—the program violates the US Civil Rights Act of 1866 and Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the complaint alleges.
As ACS receives millions of dollars of federal funding annually, the complaint alleges, the society is violating President Donald J. Trump’s executive order, dated Jan. 21, that requires federal contractors to end race-based benefit programs.
“The American Chemical Society is blatantly discriminating against aspiring chemists simply based on their skin color,” Stanley Goldfarb, a retired nephrologist and chairman of Do No Harm, says in a statement. “ACS should open its Scholars Program to students of all races, and we are prepared to bring the full force of our resources to bear on ACS and any organization that flouts the law to divide and exclude students from opportunities on the basis of race.”
C &EN , which is published by ACS but is editorially independent, contacted ACS for a comment but didn’t receive a response by deadline.
The ACS separately offers undergraduate scholarships through its Project SEED program, which selects students based on their academic achievements, financial needs, and plans for advanced studies in the chemical sciences.