Trump Admin Ends Biden’s Organ-Transplant-By-Race Policy; CMS Removes Biden-Era DEI Framework from Kidney Transplant Program Following America First Legal’s Rulemaking Petition

Breccan F. Thies/The Federalist

Trump Admin Ends Biden’s Organ-Transplant-By-Race Policy:

The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) ended a Biden administration policy that required racial considerations be made to determine who was eligible to get a kidney transplant.

CMS published a final rule Monday governing the Increasing Organ Transplant Access (IOTA) Model, a mandatory, six-year program that ostensibly sought to “increase access to kidney transplants for patients with end-stage renal disease.” However, the Biden rule, which took effect July 1, 2025, also required participating hospitals to consider race, ethnicity, and “equity” in the decision-making process for allocating organs to patients.

“CMS also wants to reiterate that allocation and transplantation decisions should be made based on objective and measurable medical criteria through the framework set up by the [Organ Procurement and Transplantation Network] OPTN … and should not be made on the basis of race or other criteria not laid out by the goals described in this section of the [Code of Federal Regulations],” the Trump CMS final rule, set to take effect July 1, 2026, states.

The rule came in response to public comment made by America First Legal (AFL) and others arguing that “transplant allocation decisions should remain grounded in objective medical criteria,” the rule states.

As AFL pointed out, the Biden rule encouraged transplant hospitals to “identify disparities among racial and demographic groups, develop Health Equity Plans, conduct resource gap analyses, establish equity-focused goals, and implement targeted interventions designed to preference selected populations.”

The Biden CMS said that “Health Equity Plans,” which were meant to determine areas where hospitals were not meeting its equity goals and then recommend remedial action, were “voluntary,” but AFL stated that they were actually embedded into the IOTA Model.

“The Biden Administration designed the IOTA Model to advance its broader equity agenda within the nation’s organ transplant system,” AFL attorney Megan Redshaw said in a press release. “Life-saving transplant decisions should be guided by medical criteria and clinical urgency — not race. We applaud CMS for removing this framework and restoring a transplant system grounded in medical need and clinical urgency.” --->READ MORE HERE

CMS Removes Biden-Era DEI Framework from Kidney Transplant Program Following America First Legal’s Rulemaking Petition:

The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) has published a final rule dismantling the Biden Administration’s “diversity, equity, and inclusion” (DEI) framework embedded within the Increasing Organ Transplant Access (IOTA) Model—a federal kidney transplant program that injected race-based health equity policies into America’s organ transplant system.

This follows a rulemaking petition and public comment filed by America First Legal (AFL), urging CMS to repeal the framework and restore a transplant system focused on medical criteria and clinical urgency rather than race.

The IOTA Model, which took effect on July 1, 2025, was created by the Biden Administration as part of its “sweeping equity agenda” to confront the “unbearable human costs of systemic racism.” As originally implemented, the model directed hospitals to factor race, ethnicity, and “equity” into organ allocation decisions by encouraging participating transplant hospitals to identify disparities among racial and demographic groups, develop Health Equity Plans, conduct resource gap analyses, establish equity-focused goals, and implement targeted interventions designed to preference selected populations.

In November 2025, AFL filed a formal rulemaking petition arguing that the IOTA Model improperly embedded race-based policies under the guise of “health equity” into a federal kidney transplant program and conflicted with longstanding federal requirements that organ allocation decisions be based on established medical criteria. AFL urged CMS to repeal the health equity framework and restore race-neutral standards in federal transplant policies. --->READ MORE HERE

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