Norman Wang files another suit against Pitt, UPMC and UPP

Norman Wang, the School of Medicine professor who penned a controversial white paper that criticized the effectiveness of affirmative action efforts in the medical field and was subsequently removed from his position as program director of the UPMC Electrophysiology Fellowship, has filed a new lawsuit against Pitt, UPMC and University of Pittsburgh Physicians (UPP).

His original lawsuit in December 2020, claimed Pitt, UPMC, the American Heart Association, UPP, which is owned by UPMC, and three doctors who work for UPMC and teach at Pitt violated his First Amendment rights, and also claimed defamation for statements allegedly claiming Wang misused academic sources. That suit and the new one were filed on Wang’s behalf by The Center for Individual Rights in Washington D.C.

Last fall, U.S. District Judge Marylyn J. Horan dismissed Pitt from the original lawsuit. The court’s opinion said several times that the actions by UPP and the doctors were taken under their roles as UPMC physicians, not as faculty in the School of Medicine.

Pitt has repeatedly said that the actions taken against Wang were done by UPMC, which has been a separate legal entity from the University of Pittsburgh since 1998.

A Pitt spokesman declined to comment on the new lawsuit, which was filed earlier this month. The suit alleges the defendants retaliated and discriminated against him over the views he expressed in the article published in March 2020 in the Journal of the American Heart Association.

The article resurfaced in August 2020 to heavy criticism from cardiologists, and JAHA retracted the paper that month saying that it did not represent the organization's values. In response to the backlash against the paper, UPMC removed Wang from his position as program director of the UPMC Electrophysiology Fellowship. 

UPMC and the three doctors — Mark Gladwin, Samir Saba and Kathryn Berlacher — are still defendants in the original suit, which is in the discovery phase.

Susan Jones

 

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