Hampton University has filed a lawsuit against the Accreditation Council for Pharmacy Education (ACPE) for removing the HU program from membership.
Hampton appealed the accreditation revocation in February and remained on probation until June, when the accreditor upheld its removal decision. Officials at the university accused the agency of bias and retaliation against the program, which successfully sued the agency in 2009 to be removed from accreditation probation.
In the complaint, Hampton University says the ACPE’s decision to take away the pharmacy program’s accreditation — and “ruin its reputation” — comes during a public health crisis and time when “the nation’s simultaneous reckoning with a legacy of structural racism and the myriad obstacles to obtaining health and wealth for people of color.”
The school cited the dire circumstances surrounding the current coronavirus pandemic, which more significantly impacts communities of color.
“If ACPE’s arbitrary action is not reversed, then the accrediting agency will have unilaterally terminated an extremely important community-oriented pharmacy program at one of the nation’s premier Historically Black Colleges and Universities during a pandemic that has disproportionately impacted those communities which HUSOP serves,” the complaint reads.
