RI Whistleblower Ramona Bessinger Barred from Serving on Public Health Board, Sues for Discrimination

RI Whistleblower Ramona Bessinger Barred from Serving on Public Health Board, Sues for Discrimination

Ramona Bessinger, the Rhode Island teacher who blew the whistle on woke ideology in the Providence public school district, is taking her battle to the public health arena. Last week, Bessinger sued officials at the State Department of Health for discrimination after she was rejected for service on one of its advisory boards.

By law, membership on the board is restricted by race and sex, restrictions that violate her rights under the Fourteenth Amendment, her lawyers at Pacific Legal say. “Ramona is a qualified candidate for this role, and she has been unconstitutionally denied this opportunity.”

Readers may recall Bessinger’s exposé of Critical Race Theory in the Providence schools, posted at Legal Insurrection in 2021. It was the first of many posts to follow in which she describes how racialized teaching materials taught both students and colleagues to turn on her because of her “white privilege.”

The debut post propelled her into the national spotlight, where she received widespread media attention, including in The Wall Street Journal, FoxNews.com, Fox News television, ABC TV, as well as multiple radio appearances and digital articles.

It also cost Bessinger her job. The school district retaliated by harassing, intimidating, and ultimately suspending her. She was then transferred to a school that didn’t want her around—so it assigned her to a room in its windowless basement, where she continued to fight until she was finally put on administrative leave.

From DEI in Public Schools to DEI in Health Care – The Brown University Connection

I asked Bessinger how she turned from fighting DEI in the public schools to fighting for equality and merit-based principles in public health policy and learned there’s a Brown University connection. It’s the latest to come to light following the recent mass shooting—and it shows how far Brown’s tentacles reach into everything in Rhode Island.

This year, when Brown University Health acquired her local medical practice, Bessinger wondered whether the DEI agenda she had seen the university push in the Providence public schools would push her out of the doctors’ office. Her family’s doctor of over 20 years had already left, along with other doctors, she said.

“Knowing Brown’s DEI agenda in the public schools’ training and affiliations,” Bessinger said, “I felt it was important to inquire if merit-based hiring practices had been abandoned.” She called one of the higher-ups, Raymond Malloy, to ask whether Brown Health hired doctors based on merit or DEI hiring goals.  

Apparently, merely asking that question triggered Malloy. Bessinger says he told her she should “get out of Brown Health” because she “wasn’t a good fit” for the practice.

Malloy made it official with this letter, kicking her out of the medical group and accusing her of “verbally abusive and offensive behavior directed at our practice team on multiple occasions”:

So Bessinger suddenly had no doctor, because Brown had “to ensure the physical and emotional safety” of its staff and patients. If she doesn’t feel good, the letter advises she see should just “call 911.”

Later, Bessinger asked Malloy to explain what, exactly, she said that was “abusive,” but she did not receive a reply.

Bessinger believes letters like this are the reason that people are afraid to protest DEI in health care.

She applied to serve on the RI Commission for Health Advocacy and Equity, hoping to shed light on DEI’s infiltration into public health. “It’s the committees that are making all these decisions that are impacting health care, education, and standard of living,” she says.

The Commission was purportedly set up to advance “health equity” in public policy. According to the Department’s website, “equity” means “everyone has a fair and just opportunity to be healthier.”

But Bessinger wonders whether “equity” means that a man who wants trans surgery will get preference over a woman who needs a mastectomy because she has cancer.

“I know how these committees work and why they’re important in order to make changes to existing policies in any government-funded entity which may include hiring and who receives healthcare,” she explained. “I want to be on that committee that is making decisions that will impact whether or not I get treatment or access to treatment.”

However, Bessinger’s lawyers say that despite the Commission’s current vacancies, state officials have so far denied her the right to even apply for a public service position.

Under a RI statute, those slots are filled based on race. The law requires the Director to appoint 20 members to the Commission, “the majority of whom shall be representatives of the racial and ethnic minority population of the State of Rhode Island.”

Bessinger’s lawsuit challenges the law as an explicit racial set-aside barring individuals like herself who don’t fit these racial criteria from competing for a majority of the seats.

Another statute challenged in the lawsuit requires all state boards and commissions to reflect the “racial and gender composition” of Rhode Island’s population.

Bessinger’s lawyers have asked the court to strike down the laws as unconstitutional under the Equal Protection and Citizenship Clauses of the Fourteenth Amendment. They say a victory for Ramona would allow all Rhode Island citizens an equal opportunity to serve on all public boards and commissions in the state, without regard to race or gender.

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