A federal appellate court has upheld the right of a Christian physician assistant to sue the University of Michigan’s medical center for firing her after she requested a religious exemption from referring patients for sex-change treatment.
The 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals issued its ruling Wednesday in favor of Valerie Kloosterman, who claimed in a 2022 lawsuit that Michigan Health violated her religious freedom by handing her a pink slip after she refused to endorse LGBTQ policies contradicting her faith.
Reversing a lower court’s 2023 ruling, a three-judge panel unanimously rejected hospital officials’ effort to settle the matter in arbitration after learning that her legal claims were likely to succeed on their merits.
“Only at that point — after a year of litigation and after the defendants got a preview of how the merits might progress in court — did they seek to arbitrate,” Judge Eric Murphy, a Trump appointee, wrote in a majority opinion.
“We conclude that this request came too late, primarily because the defendants sought to avoid arbitration altogether by asking for a complete judicial victory.”
Judges Stephanie Davis and Rachel Bloomekatz, both Biden appointees, concurred that the suit must go to court.
The First Liberty Institute, a Texas-based Christian law firm representing Ms. Kloosterman, applauded the ruling.
“It was intolerant of University of Michigan Health to fire Valerie because of her religious beliefs, and now the 6th Circuit has recognized that they cannot avoid accountability by hiding the case in arbitration,” said Kayla Toney, a First Liberty attorney.
In an email, a Michigan Health spokesperson said the medical center could not comment on pending litigation.
The ruling comes as the University of Michigan announced on Monday that it will no longer provide gender-reassignment services to patients under 19, bowing to pressure from the Trump administration.
Filed in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Michigan, Ms. Kloosterman’s lawsuit seeks monetary damages for lost wages and an injunction to prevent future firings.
“Given her beliefs regarding human sexuality, Ms. Kloosterman believes that it would be sinful to prescribe or give referrals for ’puberty blockers,’ ’hormone therapy,’ or ’gender reassignment surgery,’ regardless of what medical benefit those drugs and procedures might bring,” the complaint stated. “She believes likewise with respect to the use of biology-obscuring pronouns.”
Although Ms. Kloosterman avoided using transgender and nonbinary pronouns, the complaint noted she called patients by their first names and “never used pronouns that went against a patient’s wishes.”
According to court documents, Michigan Health required Ms. Kloosterman to complete an LGBTQ+ training module between May and June 2021.
The training asked her to check boxes affirming statements about sexual orientation and gender identity that she said contradicted her biblical belief in two sexes.
Ms. Kloosterman, a member of the United Reformed Church, decided to complete the training and meet separately with her superiors to share her concerns.
After meeting twice with Michigan Health diversity, equity and inclusion officials to request a religious exemption, she received a termination notice in August 2021. Ten days later, she got a letter confirming the reasons for her dismissal.
In her 17 years of work at the hospital, Ms. Kloosterman said nobody complained about her performance.
In his majority opinion on Wednesday, Judge Murphy noted her claim that one hospital official still called her “evil” for refusing to use patients’ preferred pronouns.
“Even apart from her religion, Kloosterman also believes that puberty-blocking drugs and sex-reassignment surgeries do not qualify as proper health care as a matter of her medical judgment,” Judge Murphy noted. “Yet the training would have required her to affirm statements inconsistent with these opinions on threat of termination.”
