A suit was filed on Tuesday in a Michigan federal district court by a woman who had worked as a physician assistant for 17 years, but was then fired for refusing, on religious grounds, to refer patients for gender transitioning drugs and procedures and to use pronouns that correspond to a patient's gender identity rather than their biological sex. In a claim denied by the fired employee, it was also claimed she altered template pronouns on medical records. The complaint (full text) in Kloosterman v. Metropolitan Hospital, (WD MI, filed 10/11/2022), alleges in part:
9. By exhibiting open hostility toward Ms. Kloosterman’s religious beliefs, University of Michigan Health-West officials violated the Free Exercise Clause....
10. By accommodating secular preferences while refusing to grant a religious accommodation to Ms. Kloosterman, University of Michigan Health-West’s actions trigger and fail strict scrutiny under the Free Exercise Clause....
11. By seeking to compel Ms. Kloosterman to speak biology-obscuring pronouns that would violate her conscience and her medical judgment, as doing so could cause patients to miss potentially life-saving screenings, University of Michigan Health-West also violated the Free Speech Clause....
12. When it engaged in the aforementioned actions and fired Ms. Kloosterman, University of Michigan Health-West also violated the Fourteenth Amendment’s Equal Protection Clause, as well as Article I, §§ 2, 4, and 5 of the Michigan Constitution and the Elliott-Larsen Civil Rights Act of 1976....
First Liberty issued a press release announcing the filing of the lawsuit.
