The Supreme Court receives almost 5000 petitions for certiorari each year. The 150 cases selected for full review and argument by the Supreme Court generally involve important constitutional principles or are likely to reverse a lower court ruling [1].

The Simkins v Moses H. Cone Memorial Hospital case, although receiving a denial of certiorari by the Supreme Court, was considered in 1963 a landmark decision for Chief Judge Simon E. Sobeloff of the 4th Circuit Court of Appeals. Judge Sobeloff received letters of accolade from citizens and esteemed law colleagues. Initially, the five circuit-court judges voted three against and two in favor of the plaintiffs. Sobeloff worked his court, changing the majority vote in favor of denial of federal funds to hospitals that racially segregated patients or denied them access to hospital beds and that refused African-American health professionals staff and employment privileges. Newspapers and hospital periodicals heralded the Supreme Court's decision to let rest the 4th Circuit Court's ruling, and the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare swiftly moved to implement new regulations on the use of federal funds under Hill-Burton [2].

Civil rights activists in the 1950s and 1960s faced even stiffer barriers in moving the executive branch of the federal government to a position in which it would use its authority within the limits of the law to demand compliance with desegregation regulations, such as in public education and voting rights. Consequently, the NAACP Legal Defense and Education Fund lawyers continued to bring forth cases to force the issue of implementation and to define the concept of "equal protection" under the law; the civil rights movement expanded in order to engage a societal decision on racism [3-5].

Implementation of racial equality in patient care may reflect a similar resistance, only one that seems more difficult to solve when it involves physicians' attitudes or when it represents barriers to access to patient care services because of a lack of health insurance or means of direct payment. These problems, however, are old, and although the situation today is not ideal, the quality of medical care provided to minority persons has significantly improved relative to the entire period of U.S. history before the mid-1960s. Perhaps the call to re-address racism in medicine is a reminder for us to reaffirm our professionalism and our commitment to serve first the needs of patients, regardless of race, sex, nationality, and socioeconomic status.