A recent article in the Wall Street Journal by Peter Berkowitz, a political scientist at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution, points out that our public universities are being politicized, and dominated by left-leaning professors and administrators. As proof, he notes that last year the American Association of University Professors officially endorsed the Occupy Wall Street movement. Certainly the Occupy movement was significant and should be addressed in courses on political and social science, but to endorse it outright is indicative of the type of liberal bias that is so prevalent in our universities today.

We at ADF are contacted on a regular basis by college students who are vilified, disciplined, and sometimes even removed from a course of study because they espouse pro-life or pro-family views. Just this week, a student from a university in North Carolina reported on our Facebook page that her campus speech was censored because it encouraged students to vote for Amendment One, which would preserve marriage as between one man and one woman in North Carolina. Her plight is just the tip of the iceberg. Students like Julea Ward at Eastern Michigan University are being forced out of their chosen field of study because they dare to believe and speak out on what the Bible has to say about sexual immorality. And religious student groups that have the audacity to require their leaders to actually believe the religious principles the group stands for are being thrown off public and even private campuses like Vanderbilt that were founded on religious principles.

As a Christian father of two teens that will be heading off to college in the next few years, this is particularly concerning to me. Especially since it’s recently been widely reported that almost half of students lose their faith when they go away to school. The answer is students have to be willing to stand for what they believe in – even in the face of opposition from overbearing professors, and pressure from their classmates. And we as parents, youth leaders, and pastors must work to prepare students for the trial of their faith we all know is coming. Merely believing because your parents believe no longer cuts it at college. Students and their leaders must do the hard work of studying the Bible to understand what they believe and why.

The good news is, we at ADF have the back of students when they do take a stand. For instance, we recently successfully defended Julea Ward in the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals. The court recognized that she had a valid claim that the university had wrongly discriminated against her because of her religious beliefs.

If you or someone you know is experiencing discrimination on campus, contact us today at telladf.org/university or 1-800-TELL ADF.

If you read this blog within the past few days, you already know that the Sixth Circuit issued a terrific decision for religious liberty in ADF’s case on behalf of Julea Ward, a student Eastern Michigan University (EMU) expelled from its counseling program because of her religious beliefs.  Among its many memorable quotes is this zinger: “Tolerance is a two-way street.”  This is tough medicine for public universities, which so often preach tolerance but practice it for only those who agree with the leftist views that dominate most college campuses.

In addition to this great quote on tolerance, I also wanted to share a few quotes from the opinion that show the refreshing common sense the court applied in rejecting EMU’s arguments.

One of EMU’s primary reasons for expelling Julea was that she allegedly violated an American Counseling Association (ACA) ethics provision against imposing values on a client.  EMU alleged this despite the facts that Julea 1) never even met the client in question, and 2) asked to refer the client.  The court saw right through EMU’s odd argument that asking for a referral is tantamount to imposing your values:

What exactly did Ward do wrong in making the referral request? . . . . The point of the referral request was to avoid imposing her values on gay and lesbian clients. And the referral request not only respected the diversity of practicum clients, but it also conveyed her willingness to counsel gay and lesbian clients about other issues—all but relationship issues—an attitude confirmed by her equivalent concern about counseling heterosexual clients about extra-marital sex and adultery in a values-affirming way.

The court also relied on common sense in rejecting EMU’s claim that Julea violated an ACA provision that prohibits discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation:

Here too, what did Ward do wrong? Ward was willing to work with all clients and to respect the school’s affirmation directives in doing so. That is why she asked to refer gay and lesbian clients (and some heterosexual clients) if the conversation required her to affirm their sexual practices. What more could the rule require? Surely, for example, the ban on discrimination against clients based on their religion (1) does not require a Muslim counselor to tell a Jewish client that his religious beliefs are correct if the conversation takes a turn in that direction and (2) does not require an atheist counselor to tell a person of faith that there is a God if the client is wrestling with faith-based issues. Tolerance is a two-way street. Otherwise, the rule mandates orthodoxy, not anti-discrimination.

In addition to our strong First Amendment claims in the case, we had argued all along that simple common sense defeated EMU’s claims that Julea had violated the ACA ethics code.  Seeking to refer a client is the exact opposite of imposing your values on them.  And a nondiscrimination rule interpreted to require students to promote ideas that violate their most sincerely held moral and religious convictions is nothing more than an ideological sledgehammer for compelling thought conformity.  I was very pleased the court shed some much needed common sense on the matter.

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We praise God for this encouraging victory!

Your support can make all the difference

ADF is committed to reclaiming and preserving religious freedom on public university campuses. By God’s grace, and with the prayers and financial support of Christians like you, we will continue our winning record of success—defending the constitutionally protected rights of students, like Julea Ward, to freely live out their faith.

Today, the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals issued a ruling in ADF’s case involving Julea Ward, a student Eastern Michigan University expelled from its graduate counseling program because of her religious beliefs.  The court reversed the lower court’s ruling against Julea, finding that “a reasonable jury could conclude that Ward’s professors ejected her from the counseling program because of hostility toward her speech and faith.”

Striking at the very heart of Ms. Ward’s lawsuit, the court said that: “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.”

We are certainly pleased the court recognized this important First Amendment principle and highlighted many of the facts in the the record showing that this is precisely the demand Eastern Michigan made of Julea.

For more information about the Sixth Circuit’s ruling and other information about this case, please see our press release.

We praise God for this encouraging victory!

Your support can make all the difference

ADF is committed to reclaiming and preserving religious freedom on public university campuses. By God’s grace, and with the prayers and financial support of Christians like you, we will continue our winning record of success—defending the constitutionally protected rights of students, like Julea Ward, to freely live out their faith.

I was privileged to speak at Duke Law School yesterday about Ward v. Wilbanks, an Alliance Defense Fund case in which Eastern Michigan University expelled a counseling graduate student for her religious beliefs and her unwillingness to perform counseling that violated her conscience.  I am grateful to the Federalist Society — both the national organization and the Duke chapter – for hosting the event.

In my presentation, I recounted some manifestations of the long American tradition of accommodating conscience.  Colonies and young states disestablished their churches (and the federal government never established a national church) in part on the ground that compelling direct support of the inherently religious activities of a particular house of worship or denomination can violate the consciences of those who dissent from some or all of that church’s beliefs.  Article II, Section 1 of the Constitution permits the incoming (or re-elected) President to “affirm” rather than “swear” to “faithfully execute the Office . . . ,” an accommodation of those that believe that Christians ought not to swear oaths.  The United States has long accommodated many of those who have a conscientious objection to military service.  Federal and state laws protect at least some of those who conscientiously object to participation in or payment for abortion, sterilization, or contraception.

The point, of course, is that what Ms. Ward seeks in her lawsuit is not particularly unusual in American law and history.  Contrary to this long tradition, EMU failed to accommodate her conscience, expelling her for declining to participate in activities that would have violated her religious convictions — and for refusing to change her religious beliefs.  Harm to third parties from her exercise of conscience was minimal to non-existent.  I am hopeful that the U.S. Court of  Appeals for the Sixth Circuit, which recently heard oral argument on Ms. Ward’s appeal of a district court ruling against her, will issue a ruling consistent with the American tradition of accommodating conscience.

Lambda Legal, a homosexual agenda legal advocacy group, recently sent a solicitation letter that seriously distorts one of Alliance Defense Fund’s public university cases in an attempt to drum up funding.  The case, Julea Ward v. Wilbanks, involves Eastern Michigan University’s expulsion of Ms. Ward (a 3.91 GPA student who was a few courses away from graduating) from its counseling program due to her religious beliefs regarding homosexual behavior.

Lambda’s letter claims that Ms. Ward “demanded to refer a gay client she had been assigned randomly as part of her course work, and refused to counsel any gay or lesbian clients in the future.”  This is simply not true.  Ms. Ward did not “demand” anything, but rather recognized a potential values conflict with the client and asked her supervisor what to do.  Her supervisor told her to refer the client, and she did, prior to ever meeting the client.  This supervisor-directed referral was consistent with EMU’s teaching that there are times where values conflicts with clients will result in referrals.  One EMU text even highlighted a study where 40% of counselors had to refer clients over a conflict involving sexual values/practices, which is precisely the conflict Ms. Ward faced.

In addition, Ms. Ward’s values conflict did not arise because the client was gay, as the Lambda letter suggests, but because the client was seeking assistance on a homosexual relationship.  Eastern Michigan requires students to affirm and validate homosexual relationships and behavior when counseling gay clients on same-sex relationship and behavior issues.  This gay-affirmative message violated Ms. Ward’s religious beliefs.  This was the source of Ms. Ward’s values conflict, not that the client was gay.  In fact, there is a plethora of evidence in the record that Ms. Ward would counsel clients identifying as homosexual on any issue that did not require her to affirm their homosexual relationships or behavior.  So Lambda’s claim that Ms. Ward would “refuse[] to counsel any gay or lesbian clients in the future” is simply false. 

Lambda’s claim that Ms. Ward targets gays and lesbians is also refuted by the fact that her objection to affirming sexual relationships that contravene biblical teachings would prevent her from counseling homosexual and heterosexual couples involved in immoral sexual relationships.  There is simply no targeting of gays going on here.  Ms. Ward would have faced, and raised, the same values conflict if the client was a heterosexual man seeking affirmation of a non-marital sexual relationship with a female.    

Non-profit advocacy groups often raise funds by highlighting the actions of groups their donors oppose, and I have no gripe with Lambda highlighting Julea Ward’s important civil rights case to its donors.  In fact, it could be viewed as a form of flattery that Lambda’s letter spills most of its ink on ADF cases.  My problem is with the letter’s complete misrepresentation of Ms. Ward’s case (there appear to be other inaccuracies in the letter that exceed the scope of this post).  The unadulterated story of Ms. Ward’s expulsion is primarily captured in the transcript of her final disciplinary hearing, which includes one of her professors taking her on a “theological bout” (his words, not mine) in which he questioned her understanding of her own religious beliefs.  This is stunning (and unconstitutional) conduct.  I can only hope that some of the folks who received Lambda’s letter will read this post and review the  transcript so they can understand the true nature of Ms. Ward’s case.