Two conservative Supreme Court justices warned New York officials that if they try again to ration health care based on the patient’s race—as they did with COVID-19 treatments in 2021—they will vote to take a case challenging the policy on an emergency basis.
The comments came in a statement Justice Samuel Alito filed when the court denied a request to review the plan of New York City and New York State to deprioritize the treatment of white COVID-19 patients during the recent pandemic.
Justice Clarence Thomas joined the statement.
Both justices concurred with the denial only because the “circumstances underlying the dispute below have long since come and gone,” meaning because the COVID-19 emergency has ended.
Without providing an explanation, the Supreme Court turned down the petition for certiorari, or review, in Roberts v. McDonald (court file 22-757) in an unsigned order on June 30. At least four of the nine justices have to vote to grant a petition in order for it to move forward to the oral argument stage.
The denial of the petition came a day after the court issued a landmark ruling in Students for Fair Admissions v. President and Fellows of Harvard College, in which the court found that racial discrimination in the college admissions process was unconstitutional.
Petitioners Jonathan Roberts and Charles Vavruska, both New York residents, filed a lawsuit (pdf) on Feb. 8, 2022, in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of New York, against the New York State Department of Health and the Department of Health and Mental Hygiene of the City of New York.
As a surge in the Omicron variant of COVID-19 took place in December 2021, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration granted emergency approval for Paxlovid, a drug that was hailed as an “antiviral superstar,” that “reduces the rate of hospitalizations by around 90 percent” with “no safety issue beyond placebo.”
Despite plans to boost production, supplies of the drug were limited when the petition was filed.
Mr. Roberts and Mr. Vavruska objected to the policy of the state and city to instruct health care providers to adhere to the state’s directive for distributing scarce COVID-19 treatments—oral antivirals Paxlovid and Molnupiravir, along with monoclonal antibodies.
“The directives require providers to prioritize treatment to individuals based on age, vaccination status, and a number of risk factors. Risk factors include medical conditions such as cancer, chronic disease, diabetes, and obesity.
“The directives also state that, apart from any medical condition, non-white race or Hispanic/Latino ethnicity must be considered as an independent risk factor,” according to the petition.
For example, “an unvaccinated 64-year-old African-American with diabetes receives priority over an unvaccinated white 64-year-old with diabetes. A vaccinated 66-year-old who is Hispanic receives priority over a vaccinated 66-year-old who is not.”
“New York’s designation of race as an independent risk factor has no basis in science. Although race may be associated with different risk factors, New York has cited no evidence that race—on its own—makes an individual more susceptible to suffering adverse effects from COVID-19.”
Such evidence “does not exist, because race does not connote any attribute inherent to any individual. It is instead an arbitrary classification that lumps in many different individuals with different attributes and different needs.
“New York’s designation of race as an independent risk factor deprives deserving individuals of much-needed medical treatments solely due to their race.”
Mr. Roberts was white and not Hispanic, vaccinated against COVID-19, and had no known risk factors for severe illness that could result from the disease. This meant Roberts did not “qualify for inclusion in any tier of the ‘risk groups’ established” by the state or city health departments.
“If he were any race but white, he would qualify for the last tier [1E] of the risk groups,” the legal complaint stated.
Mr. Vavruska was also white and not Hispanic, and vaccinated against COVID-19. He contracted the disease in March 2020 and was hospitalized for 10 days. He had at least one risk factor for severe illness that could result from the disease and therefore “qualifies for inclusion in the last tier [1E] of the risk groups for prioritization of certain COVID-19 treatments.”
The petitioners sued to gain “the ability to access oral antiviral or monoclonal antibody treatments on an equal basis, without regard to their race, if they contract COVID-19.”
The district court dismissed the case for lack of standing, and that ruling was affirmed by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 2nd Circuit.
Mr. Alito said in his statement that the case: “Involves an issue of ongoing importance: whether the Equal Protection Clause permits governments to use race or ethnicity as a proxy for health risk and therefore ‘prioritize the treatment of patients’ on that basis.”
He said if “any government again resorts to racial or ethnic classifications to ration medical treatment, there would be a very strong case for prompt review by this Court.”
The state’s policy “justified the use of race and ethnicity as proxies for health risk by appealing to ‘longstanding systemic health and social inequities.’”
But the Equal Protection Clause “places a ‘daunting’ obstacle in the way of any government seeking to allocate benefits or burdens based on race or ethnicity, typically giving way only when the measure in question is ‘narrowly tailored’—that is, ‘necessary’—to ‘remediate specific, identified instances of past discrimination that violated the Constitution or a statute,’” Mr. Alito wrote, quoting the Harvard decision last month.
New York’s reference to “longstanding systemic health and social inequities” does not justify the state denying a person medical treatment “simply because that person is viewed by the State as being a member of the wrong racial or ethnic group.”
“The shortage at issue in this case appears, thankfully, to have concluded. But in the event that any government again resorts to racial or ethnic classifications to ration medical treatment, there would be a very strong case for prompt review by this Court,” the justice wrote.
Jim Burling, vice president of legal affairs for the Pacific Legal Foundation (PLF), which represented Mr. Roberts and Mr. Vavruska, told The Epoch Times he agreed with Mr. Alito.
PLF is a national non-profit public interest law firm that challenges government abuses.
The idea of giving preference to a racial or ethnic group because of “‘longstanding systemic health and social inequities,’ makes no sense because all the data showed that there were no significant differences in morbidity between various ethnic groups,” Mr. Burling said in an interview.
“The court in this term, came out in no uncertain terms against racial gerrymandering for college admissions, and it shouldn’t be any different for health care,” he said.
“If there is a live case, and it gets up to the Court soon enough, they certainly could win.”
Usually, when the Supreme Court turns down a petition, it simply says “denied” and puts it on the list of denied cases, he said.
“But on those occasions where the Court comes out with a statement, or sometimes they dissent from the denial, that really gives a lot of people a roadmap to the future to try to get another similar case before the Supreme Court.”
So this Roberts v. McDonald case “is just another one of these cases where some members of the Court are saying, ‘hey, don’t give up on this. We’re interested and bring us another case and we might take it,’” Mr. Burling said.
Cornell Law School professor William Jacobson, who brought a similar case against New York for its discriminatory medical policy but did not appeal its dismissal for lack of standing to the Supreme Court, said the 2nd Circuit’s standing standard was impossible to meet.
The standard “required a plaintiff to contract Covid, be medically eligible, and be in a position to seek the medicine, before a suit.
“Legally and substantively it’s an idiotic standard because the medication was only effective if taken within five days of symptoms. So the courts set up a standing requirement that almost no one could meet as a practical matter because of the tight time frame to seek judicial relief.
“The courts gave health officials almost unbridled authority to engage in racist conduct as to emergency medical treatments,” Mr. Jacobson wrote at Legal Insurrection.
Because of Mr. Alito’s statement, “We know that at least two of the Justices are interested in hearing a case of medical racism in the right procedural posture,” he added.
The Epoch Times also asked New York State’s solicitor general, Barbara Underwood, for comment but had not received a response at the time of publication.
New York City Law Department spokesman Nick Paolucci said by email that the department “is not commenting.”
Article cross-posted from our premium news partners at The Epoch Times.
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Two Storms, One Harvest
Every food crisis in living memory has been a one-shock event. The 2008 price spike was a commodity bubble. The 2020 shortages were a logistics failure. The 2022 grain scare was a war on one exporter’s ports. Each time, the system bent, adjusted, and recovered, and each time the experts assured us afterward that global markets are simply too big and too diversified to fail.
What nobody in Washington seems eager to discuss is that 2026 is shaping up to be something the modern food system has never actually faced. Two independent shocks, one climatic and one geopolitical, are converging on the same harvest cycle at the same time. Not sequentially. Simultaneously.
Start with the weather. The Pacific Ocean is currently building toward what forecasters now openly call a record event. NOAA’s Climate Prediction Center puts the odds of at least a strong El Niño near 88 percent, with roughly two in three odds it reaches “very strong” status, the tier reserved for perhaps three or four events in the entire satellite era. Every major global model now projects a median peak in Super El Niño territory, and most of them project it exceeding the 2015-16 event, which until now held the modern record. Sea surface anomalies were already brushing the super threshold in mid-July, months before these events normally peak. The atmosphere has already shifted into El Niño mode, and the event is forecast to crest in late fall and early winter.
This is not about “climate change.” It’s about the standard cycles of weather, and the cycle we’re currently in is one that has likely devastated societies in the past. We’re better prepared as a society today, but not all Americans are equally prepared.
Serious households have started doing the quiet math on their own. Grocery bills tell part of the story, and the forecast maps tell the rest, which is why long-term food storage has moved from fringe hobby to mainstream line item in the family budget, with established suppliers like Heaven’s Harvest seeing demand from people who five years ago would have rolled their eyes at the idea. That instinct is not paranoia. It is pattern recognition, and the pattern is worth walking through carefully.
Editor’s Note: Heaven’s Harvest IS a sponsor, but the warnings of this article are real and would be written even if we didn’t have a survival food sponsor. With that said, those who take advantage of what they offer can use promo code “Patriot” for 15% off.
The Fertilizer Clock Is Already Running
While the Pacific warms, the second shock has been unfolding in the Strait of Hormuz. The conflict with Iran turned the world’s most important energy chokepoint into a contested waterway, and the consequences reach far beyond the gas pump. Roughly a third of global fertilizer trade moves through Hormuz, and the disruption sent urea prices up 86 percent year over year by March, with a 53 percent jump in a single month.
The World Bank projects energy prices rising about 24 percent in 2026 and fertilizer about 31 percent. By its own accounting, fertilizer prices ran 35 percent higher in the first five months of this year than the same period last year.
Here is the mechanism the nightly news will not explain. Fertilizer is not a grocery item. It is a time-delayed input. The nitrogen a farmer in Iowa or Punjab could not afford to apply this spring does not show up as a problem this spring. It shows up as a thinner harvest six to twelve months later.
The World Bank’s own food security brief concedes that the effects of reduced applications earlier this season “are likely to become visible only later in harvest outcomes.” Translate that from institutional language into plain English and it means this. The damage is already done, it is already in the ground, and we are simply waiting for it to arrive on the shelf.
Now check the calendar. Six to twelve months from the spring planting season lands us squarely in late 2026 and early 2027. Which is precisely when the strongest El Niño in the instrumental record is forecast to peak, bringing its signature droughts to Southeast Asia, Australia, southern Africa, northern Brazil, and South Asia, the very regions that grow the world’s rice, sugar, and oilseeds.
The World Bank warns openly that a strong El Niño “could disrupt multiple crop belts simultaneously” on top of the conflict-driven input costs. Their baseline projection assumes the Middle East disruptions ease by autumn. What in the last two years of Middle East history suggests that assumption is safe?
The System Has No Slack Left
The comfortable answer is that global markets always adjust. But adjustment requires slack, and the slack is gone. Global cereal production is expected to decline from last year’s records even before El Niño does its work. The UN World Food Programme, hardly a den of right-wing preppers, is calling this the most significant disruption to its supply chains since Covid and the invasion of Ukraine, and its supply chain director put the stakes bluntly.
Today’s supply chain challenges are tomorrow’s hunger crisis.
There is also a political dimension that markets cannot price. When food gets scarce, governments do not behave like economists. They behave like politicians. Export bans, hoarding mandates, and panic buying at the national level turned the modest rice shortfall of 2008 into a global crisis, and analysts are already warning that import-dependent nations are the first dominoes.
The 2015-16 Super El Niño, a far weaker event than what is now forecast, threw tens of millions into food stress across Africa and Asia. This one is projected to be stronger, and it arrives with fertilizer already rationed by price and shipping lanes already contested by missiles.
What Joseph Knew
Scripture does not treat preparation for lean years as faithlessness. It treats it as wisdom delivered in advance to those willing to act on it.
Behold, there come seven years of great plenty throughout all the land of Egypt: And there shall arise after them seven years of famine; and all the plenty shall be forgotten in the land of Egypt.
Joseph did not respond to that warning with a hashtag or a committee. He stored grain during the years of abundance, and when the famine came, Egypt stood while its neighbors begged. The lesson is not that famine is certain. It is that the time to prepare is precisely when preparation still looks optional.
Nobody who filled a pantry in a year of plenty has ever regretted it, and nobody standing in an empty aisle has ever been glad he waited for certainty.
None of this calls for panic, and panic is the enemy of sound judgment anyway. It calls for the same unglamorous prudence our grandparents considered ordinary. Keep some cash margin, know your local growers, and put real food in deep storage while it is cheap and available, because the entire arc of this story is that cheap and available is a closing window.
Families looking for a straightforward place to start can visit Heaven’s Harvest and use promo code Patriot for 15 percent off long-term storable food. The forecasts may yet soften, the strait may yet reopen, and we should pray they do. But hope is a fine thing to hold and a foolish thing to eat.