Appeals Court Dismissed Case of Counselor Refusing Work With Gay Students

Jennifer Keeton 
A year ago Eastern Michigan University dismissed Jennifer Keeton for refusing

to counsel gay students because of her religious and moral belief’s. The school had no choice but to dismissed her. Many people in the gay community were kind of surprised when last january a judge ruled in her favor. As the School appealed, now we got a decision on the appeal and the school prevailed. So does the continuing equality that we are trying to reach in all aspects of human rights and civil rights as well. We have a constitution that tie the two together. The school did brought this upon themselves by not having a fair policy to start with.   

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A federal judge has dismissed a lawsuit by a former student who challenged the right of Augusta State University's counseling program to require all students to learn to treat gay patients in a supportive, nonjudgmental manner. Judge J. Randal Hall found that the university's rules did not violate the rights of religious students such as the woman who sued.

The Augusta State case is one of two that involve public universities seeking to require counseling students to adhere to professional standards about equitable treatment and complaints from religious students who argue that their rights are being violated because of the university rules. The Augusta State suit has already been the subject of rulings at the district court and appeals court levels (with both rulings backing the university), but those decisions were about the request from Jennifer Keeton, the former student, for an injunction. This new ruling, in contrast, is about the merits of the lawsuit itself.

 Judge Hall's ruling largely refused to engage in debate about the morality of being gay or of the value of religious freedom. He framed the issue as an academic one.

He said that the issues should be considered this way: "Baldly stated in outline, they amount to no more than this: a student enrolled in a professional graduate program was required to complete a course of remediation after being cited for purported professional deficiencies by educators in her chosen field of study; she refused to do so and was dismissed from the program.”

The appeals court decision notes the lack of a written university policy of "no referrals," and says that this policy may have been an "after-the-fact invention" to justify religious discrimination. Further, the appeals court says that the hearing Eastern Michigan conducted on Ward was "not a model of dispassion," and featured questions about her religious views with regard to gay people.

The appeals court decision notes the lack of a written university policy of "no referrals," and says that this policy may have been an "after-the-fact invention" to justify religious discrimination. Further, the appeals court says that the hearing Eastern Michigan conducted on Ward was "not a model of dispassion," and featured questions about her religious views with regard to gay people.

"Many of the faculty members’ statements to Ward raise a similar concern about religious discrimination. A reasonable jury could find that the university dismissed Ward from its counseling program because of her faith-based speech, not because of any legitimate pedagogical objective. A university cannot compel a student to alter or violate her belief systems based on a phantom policy as the price for obtaining a degree," the decision says.

At the same time, however, the decision notes that "none of this means Ward should win as a matter of law." The university may well be able to prove at trial that its no-referrals policy was not a pretext, but was a legitimate curricular decision (as the university maintains it was). "Just as the inferences favor Ward in the one setting, they favor the university defendants in the other. At this stage of the case and on this record, neither side deserves to win as a matter of law.”  

  Scott Jaschik