DOJ probes Baltimore City Health Department for racially segregated training

The Department of Justice is investigating the Baltimore City Health Department over reports of segregating employees into a “White caucus” and a “people of color caucus” during taxpayer-funded racial equity training.

Internal documents obtained by Spotlight on Maryland show that the city paid outside consultants to conduct racial equity training that included helping White people understand their “own complicity and systemic racism.”

The Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division announced its investigation Wednesday in a letter to Baltimore Mayor Brandon Scott. It says the health department paid consultants $50,000 between 2022 and 2024 for an “Undoing Racism Workshop” led by the Louisiana-based People’s Institute for Survival and Beyond.

Receipts reviewed by Spotlight on Maryland show that health officials spent more than $2,000 in taxpayer funds on food for a three-day racial equity training in November 2024. They also paid the People’s Institute $150 for each White caucus meeting it attended and oversaw.

The health department said the White caucus met for “building analysis, awareness, stamina, and strategy to challenge systemic racism and internalized white supremacy,” Spotlight on Maryland reported.

“These goals require some time and intentional spaces where white people can do the personal work of understanding our own complicity and systemic racism and build the skills necessary to challenge that complicity,” the department said, according to the news outlet.

The health department justified separating the groups by race, saying, “White affinity groups allow us to examine our racial conditioning without relying on people of color for answers or subjecting themselves to our process.”

A health department email shows the White caucus meetings continued through at least June 2025.

A spokesperson for the People’s Institute referred to the meetings as “affinity spaces” that are proven to “increase employee engagement and retention.”

“Research on affinity groups demonstrates that members feel more supported by colleagues after participating. These groups create opportunities to share ideas and offer feedback in smaller spaces, which then improves the quality of dialogue and problem-solving across the department,” the spokesperson told Spotlight on Maryland.

Assistant Attorney General Harmeet Dhillon said that separating employees into race-based training groups is “discriminatory, illegal, and un-American.”

“Such practices are divisive and foster a racially hostile work environment,” Ms. Dhillon said in a statement. “Racial segregation of employees is deeply offensive to the American guarantee of equal rights under the law, and it will not be tolerated.”