When Minnesota and Utah health officials started using race as a factor to determine who would get scarce covid-19 treatments, they were hailed for their efforts to bridge the pandemic’s deadly racial divide.

Now those officials are center stage of the nation’s latest battle over race, identity and equity, after they rolled back their policies under pressure from conservatives and a group led by Stephen Miller, a top adviser to former president Donald Trump.

Miller’s fledgling group, America First Legal, also is suing New York in federal court to get it to remove race as one of many selection criteria for outpatient antiviral treatments, saying the state’s policy discriminates against Whites despite data showing that most of the medicines go to people in that group. On Monday, the group filed legal papers seeking to declare all non-Hispanic Whites in New York a legal class facing urgent harm from the state’s health guidance.

Misinformation about these policies — relayed in Miller’s lawsuit, Trump’s remarks at a recent rally and on Tucker Carlson’s show on Fox News — has energized the conservative base and contributed to the cancellation of some of the policies, experts said.

Hospitalization and death rates from covid-19 have cumulatively been higher for minorities throughout the pandemic. Minnesota and Utah officials say these racial disparities remain concerning, even if the states no longer use race as one of the factors to help decide which patients take priority when...

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