Will university’s expulsion of Christian grad student stand?
“Christian students shouldn’t be expelled for abiding by their beliefs,” said French. “Affirming homosexual behavior against one’s own religious beliefs should not be a precondition at a public university for obtaining a degree.”
EMU initiated its disciplinary process against Ward shortly after she enrolled in a counseling practicum course in January 2009, when she was assigned a potential client seeking assistance regarding a homosexual relationship. Recognizing the potential conscience issue with the client, and knowing she could not affirm the client’s homosexual relationship without violating her religious beliefs, Ward asked her supervisor how to handle the matter. Ward was advised to reassign the potential client to a different counselor. Shortly thereafter, EMU informed Ward that the only way she could stay in the counseling program would be if she agreed to undergo a “remediation” program. Its purpose was to help her “see the error of her ways” and change her “belief system” as it relates to counseling about homosexual relationships. Ward did not agree to the unconstitutional conditions.
At a subsequent formal review meeting, EMU faculty denigrated Ward’s Christian views and asked several inappropriate and intrusive questions about her religious beliefs. A faculty committee then dismissed her from the counseling program. Ward appealed, but the dean of EMU College of Education upheld the dismissal.
“Julea merely followed her supervising professor’s advice by referring a potential client to a counselor who had no conscience issue with the particular matter to be discussed,” said ADF Legal Counsel Jeremy Tedesco. “She would have gladly counseled the client herself had the topic focused on any other matter.”
The university’s actions were enabled by EMU policies that ADF attorneys are challenging in the lawsuit as flagrantly unconstitutional. One policy that prohibits “discrimination based on…sexual orientation” problematically adds that counselors cannot “condone” what the university defines as discrimination. A second policy being challenged states that EMU’s counseling department may discipline a student who demonstrates a “failure to tolerate different points of view.”
In March, the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Michigan ruled that the professors who expelled Ward may be held personally liable for their actions. Steven M. Jentzen, one of nearly 1,700 attorneys in the ADF alliance, is serving as local counsel in the case.
- Fact sheet on lawsuit
ADF is a legal alliance of Christian attorneys and like-minded organizations defending the right of people to freely live out their faith. Launched in 1994, ADF employs a unique combination of strategy, training, funding, and litigation to protect and preserve religious liberty, the sanctity of life, marriage, and the family.
I don’t agree with this but I think if it is private institution then they should have the right to run it the way the want for the same reason a malt shop can deny service to someone who is of a different race. It is their property and their right to use that property in any manor that they wish even when the use of that property is deeply offensive to a lot of people.
If that institution is private in the sense that it doesn’t acquire federal money then I agree with you. But if that institution acquires federal tax money then that money should not be allowed to deny a persons religious beliefs!