FLASHBACK: Tim Walz’s Health Department Devised COVID-19 Plan That Prioritized Blacks Over Whites

The Minnesota Department of Health (MDH) under Democratic Gov. Tim Walz, now his party’s presumptive vice presidential nominee, used race to determine who could receive potentially life-saving medication during the COVID-19 pandemic, documents show.

In 2021, Minnesota adopted a framework, which they later reformed following pushback, that assigned points based on various personal attributes to ration monoclonal antibodies, a COVID-19 treatment that was in short supply at the time, according to state documents. Under the state’s point system, a healthy 25-year-old black person, for instance, would have been put in front of a 55-year-old white person with hypertension or a 64-year-old white person to receive monoclonal antibodies during the pandemic due to their race.

People falling under “BIPOC status,” which refers to black, indigenous and people of color, were awarded two points through the framework, having been given the same weight as cardiovascular disease, obesity and diabetes, all known comorbidities for the virus. Monoclonal antibodies are a treatment for COVID-19 administered via infusion that can reduce the risk of hospitalization or severe illness.

Walz had direct influence over his state’s health department as, in Minnesota, the governor is responsible for appointing the MDH’s commissioner, according to MinnPost. Minnesota leaned on the Biden-Harris administration to justify its policies, citing the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in its framework documents to explain why it was using racial discrimination to distribute life-saving medication.

“The FDA has acknowledged that in addition to certain underlying health conditions, race and ethnicity ‘may also place individual patients at high risk for progression to severe COVID-19,’” Minnesota’s guidelines read. “FDA’s acknowledgment means that race and ethnicity alone, apart from other underlying health conditions, may be considered in determining eligibility for [monoclonal antibodies].”

America First Legal, a conservative legal advocacy group, sent then MDH Commissioner Jan Malcolm a letter in 2022 threatening a lawsuit if her department didn’t remove the racial consideration from its framework, characterizing the guidelines as a set of “blatantly unconstitutional, immoral and racist policies.”

“The color of one’s skin is not a medical condition akin to hypertension, heart disease, or obesity, which are known to aggravate the risk of death or severe illness among those infected with COVID-19,” the letter reads.

Following the backlash, MDH backed down and removed race as a consideration for the rationing of monoclonal antibodies in 2022, the Star Tribune reported. The department did not expand on its reasoning for changing its framework, only stating that it regularly reviews policies to ensure “that communities that have been disproportionately impacted by COVID-19 have the support and resources they need.”

Walz faced criticisms for other policies his administration pursued during the COVID-19 pandemic, including imposing stricter gathering limits on churches than retailers, sending sick patients back to nursing homes and implementing a tip line that allowed residents to report their neighbors for violating lockdown orders. An independent state audit also found that his administration overlooked a $250 million COVID-19 fraud scheme due to poor oversight practices.

The fusion of racial equity and public health continued further into Walz’s tenure as governor, with the state’s vaccine strategy having “equity goals” focused on addressing “persistent disparities in vaccination coverage by race and ethnicity,” according to MDH’s website.