A federal appeals court on Friday revived a student’s lawsuit against Eastern Michigan University, which had expelled her from its graduate program in counseling after she asked to be excused from counseling a gay patient because her Christian faith prevented her from affirming the patient’s homosexuality.
The decision, by a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit, is not a ruling on the merits of the lawsuit, which was filed by Julea Ward. Rather, the decision returns the case for trial to the lower court that had dismissed it in 2010.
Ms. Ward has asserted that the university violated her rights to free speech and religious freedom by not respecting her wish to simply refer the patient to another counselor. At the time she was expelled, Ms. Ward had top grades and was only a few credits away from a degree.
The university said that her refusal violated the American Counseling Association’s ethical code upholding the profession’s standards and barring discrimination based on sexual orientation. The university also said the required practical-skills course in which the dispute arose did not offer her the option of referring patients to other counselors.
The appeals court noted that the association’s code appears to permit referrals in such situations, and it criticized Eastern Michigan for enforcing a no-referrals policy when such a policy was not stated in the course description or the program handbook, and could be an “after-the-fact invention.”
“A university cannot compel a student to alter or violate her belief systems,” the court ruled, “based on a phantom policy as the price for obtaining a degree.”
The judges said, contrary to the lower court’s summary ruling, that a jury could conclude that Ms. Ward had been expelled because of “hostility toward her speech and faith, not due to a policy against referrals.”
The judges also sought to distinguish this lawsuit from a similar case in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit, which in December ruled against a graduate student in school counseling who had also bridled at gay patients because of her Christian faith and had sought a court order barring Augusta State University from expelling her.
The other case, the Sixth Circuit panel said, “involved Augusta State’s across-the-board application of an ethical rule that prohibits counselors from imposing their values on clients.” The Ward case, by contrast, “reveals evidence that Eastern Michigan University selectively enforced a no-referral policy.”
The Sixth Circuit judges also noted that the Augusta State student actually sought to change gay clients into heterosexuals through a practice known as “conversion therapy.” By contrast, the judges said, Ms. Ward “asked only that the university not change her,” by allowing her to refer gay clients elsewhere.
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