A federal district court has thrown out a civil-rights lawsuit challenging the Augusta State University school-counseling program’s dismissal of a student who said her Christian beliefs preclude her from affirmatively counseling homosexual students.
Judge J. Randal Hall of the U.S. District Court in Augusta, Ga., dismissed the lawsuit last week, rejecting its claims that the graduate counseling program had violated the student’s rights under the U.S. Constitution by demanding that she demonstrate a willingness to counsel homosexual students in a nonjudgmental manner. In upholding the counseling program’s decision to kick out the student, Jennifer Keeton, for refusing to complete a remediation plan intended to change her position, Judge Hall said the plan was based on a “a legitimate pedagogical interest in cultivating a professional demeanor” and concern that Ms. Keeton “might prove unreceptive to certain issues and openly judge her clients.”
Ms. Keeton was motivated by her religious beliefs, but those she sued were not, Judge Hall concluded in rejecting her claims that professors and administrators at Augusta State, and officials of the University System of Georgia, had violated her rights under the Constitution’s First Amendment and Equal Protection Clause. Rejecting the idea that the case represented “a public contest of values,” Judge Hall said the facts it had presented “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 Alliance Defense Fund, an advocacy group that has represented Ms. Keeton in her lawsuit, issued a statement on Wednesday in which one of its lawyers, Jeremy Tedesco, said people there are evaluating the district court’s opinion and have not yet decided whether to appeal. Officials of Augusta State University, which has not issued a statement in response to the decision, could not be reached Wednesday for comment.
Clients and Conscience
Ms. Keeton’s lawsuit, filed in 2010 as her conflict with the program was reaching a head, had already suffered two setbacks in the form of refusals by Judge Hall and then the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit to block the counseling program from expelling her. In the appeals court’s ruling, a three-judge panel unanimously held that Ms. Keeton’s lawsuit had little chance of succeeding and accused her of seeking preferential treatment.
Similar issues have been raised in a separate lawsuit against Eastern Michigan University. That case is pending in federal district court after a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit reversed a decision in that university’s favor.
The Sixth Circuit’s decision held that the lawsuit against Eastern Michigan is distinct from the one against Augusta State because the Georgia case involved the “across-the-board application of an ethical rule that prohibits counselors from imposing their values on clients.” In the lawsuit against Eastern Michigan, the decision said, Julea Ward, a Christian student expelled from the graduate-level counseling program, had provided evidence that the university selectively enforced a policy that precluded her from simply referring homosexual clients to other counselors who did not share her beliefs.
The Michigan House of Representatives this month passed a bill, the “Julea Ward Freedom of Conscience Act,” which would prohibit the counseling, social work, and psychology programs at public colleges from disciplining students who wish to refer away clients they conscientiously object to treating. The measure is pending before that state’s Senate.
Bringing Up Religion
In his decision concluding that Augusta State had not violated Ms. Keeton’s freedom of speech or religion, Judge Hall said the faculty members who demanded she undergo remediation to learn to treat gay clients in an affirmative manner did so to ensure she would be able to comply with the American Counseling Association’s code of ethics and the American School Counselor Association’s ethical standards. Their interest, he said, was in Ms. Keeton’s professional conduct, not in her expressive activity or her personal beliefs, and it was she who insisted on framing her conflict with her instructors in religious terms.
“Keeton’s conflation of personal and professional values, or at least her difficulty in discerning the difference, appears to have been rooted in her opinion that the immorality of homosexual relations is a matter of objective and absolute moral truth,” Judge Hall wrote. “The policies which govern the ethical conduct of counselors, however, with their focus on client welfare and self-determination, make clear that the counselor’s professional environs are not intended to be a crucible for counselors to test metaphysical or moral propositions.”
The “absolutist philosophical character” of Ms. Keeton’s beliefs “does not entitle her to university accommodation, and it is irrelevant to the court’s analysis,” Judge Hall wrote. The remediation plan she received was viewpoint neutral and cannot be seen as compelling her to espouse speech she disagrees with, he said, because its focus was on the private speech she engages in with clients “as an impartial and supportive sounding board.”
“The remediation plan did not require her to forgo any personal religious belief or practice, nor did the plan demand that she mute her objections,” the ruling said. Citing his conclusion that the remediation plan was imposed on Ms. Keeton for professional reasons, and not in response to her religious views, Judge Hall said she had been treated no differently than any other student, and he rejected her claim that the university’s faculty had violated her equal-protection rights by discriminating against her based on her religious speech and beliefs.
