Dr. Eugene Gu, an ex-Vanderbilt doctor, accused the hospital of discrimination.

Gu is a outspoken liberal doctor who is a frequent critic of President Donald Trump.

Gu left Vanderbilt last summer after the hospital declined to renew his contract.

A politically outspoken doctor and social media figure who formerly worked at Vanderbilt University Medical Center has accused the renowned hospital of racial discrimination and said he plans to file a lawsuit in California courts.

Dr. Eugene Gu, a former Vanderbilt surgical resident, announced on Twitter over the weekend that he had filed a complaint with the Tennessee Human Rights Commission and the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, or EEOC.

Gu posted a lightly redacted copy of the complaint online, showing he has accused the hospital of racial discrimination and retaliation. The complaint alleges that Gu faced harassment at the hospital, but the hospital took no action to stop the harassment and instead punished him after he spoke about the experience in tweets and online articles.

“Throughout my tenure with (Vanderbilt), I and my other non-white peers were subjected to harassment and discrimination,” Gu wrote in the complaint. “After I raised my concerns publicly, (Vanderbilt) began to discipline me. (Vanderbilt) wrote me up, suspended me and ultimately refused to renew my contract on or about July 1, 2018.”

John Howser, a spokesman for Vanderbilt, said the hospital had not been served with the EEOC complaint so it was not yet prepared to respond to Gu's allegations.

Gu said he also plans to file a discrimination lawsuit against Vanderbilt in federal court in California, alleging, in part, that he will not get fair treatment in Tennessee courts because of the “influence” that Vanderbilt has in the state.

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Gu, an outspoken liberal doctor with 258,000 Twitter followers, became a controversial figure at Vanderbilt due to his public support of Colin Kaepernick and his criticism of President Donald Trump. In 2017, Gu posted a picture of himself kneeling in a hospital hallway in support of Kaepernick, a NFL quarterback who had begun kneeling during the national anthem to protest racial injustice in America.

“I’m an Asian-American doctor and today I #TakeTheKnee to fight white supremacy,” Gu tweeted.

Gu is also among Trump's most tenacious Twitter critics and responds to nearly all of the president's tweets. This criticism led Trump to block Gu on Twitter in 2017, and Gu then became one of seven Twitter users who sued Trump in federal court claiming the president had violated their First Amendment rights. The lawsuit, seen as a free speech debate for the social media age, ended with a ruling in Gu's favor last year.

Gu has also spoken publicly about what he claims was a racially-motivated attack on hospital grounds during the first year of his residency. Gu alleges he was attacked by a white man who shouted racial slurs in the hospital parking garage. The man followed him into the hospital before police intervened, he said. Gu said both he and the man were arrested. Charges were later dropped against both of them.

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Gu’s employment at Vanderbilt came to an end last summer when the hospital declined to renew his contract, ending his five-year residency after only three years. The decision was not technically a firing, Gu said, but the impact was the same. He said at the time he was being punished for breaking an “unwritten rule” that non-white doctors should “stay silent” and not criticize the hospital.

Vanderbilt has said in a prior email statement that the decision not to renew Gu's contract was not a result of his criticism of Trump, his lawsuit, or his public opposition to racism. The hospital has said previously that all disciplinary actions against Gu relate to his work performance and professionalism.

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Brett Kelman is the health care reporter for The Tennessean. He can be reached at 615-259-8287 or at brett.kelman@tennessean.com. Follow him on Twitter at @brettkelman.