Federal judge sets up trial for religious discrimination case

(Pixabay)

A federal judge has set the stage for a trial in a case that charges Michigan officials inflicted religious discrimination on a medical professional working at the University of Michigan Health-West.

The ruling cited the state officials' "hostility" to Christianity.

U.S. District Judge Jane Becker ruled, in a case brought by First Liberty Institute on behalf of Valerie Kloosterman, that her claims of violations of the Constitution's Free Exercise and Equal Protection clauses, as well as Title VII, may proceed.

Get the hottest, most important news stories on the Internet – delivered FREE to your inbox as soon as they break! Take just 30 seconds and sign up for WND's Email News Alerts!

Kloosterman was fired when she sought a religious accommodation that would allow her to avoid affirming statements that violate her conscience, referring patients for sex-obscuring procedures and experimental drugs, and from using biology-obscuring pronouns.

The case involves violations of the First and Fourteenth Amendments

"It is intolerant of employers to demand that medical professionals like Valerie abandon their religious beliefs in order to remain employed," explained Kayla Toney, a lawyer for First Liberty. "We are pleased that the court recognized that our claims that Michigan Health violated Valerie’s constitutional rights and federal employment law have merit and that her lawsuit should proceed. Employers in our nation need to take notice that religious employees cannot be discriminated against because of their beliefs."

The legal team explained that in 2021, following a company-required "diversity" training meeting, she sought a religious accommodation because she could not affirm statements about the corporation's fluid-gender ideology that violated her Christian beliefs

Are Michigan state officials hostile to Christianity?

She was summoned to a later meeting so that a "diversity representative" could call her "evil" and blame her for suicides.

Then she was told she was not allowed to have her Bible "or her religious beliefs" at work. She then was fired.

The judge found Kloosterman held an "exemplary" work record and that her "vibrant faith informs how she does her work as a medical professional."

"The court ruled that Michigan Health officials demonstrated 'hostility toward the sincere religious beliefs that motivated her objection to the training module.' The court cited Kennedy v. Bremerton School District for the principle that 'official expressions of hostility' violate the Free Exercise Clause of the First Amendment," First Liberty said.

The court also found merit in Kloosterman’s Equal Protection and Title VII claims, because she showed that University of Michigan Health accommodated the preferences of other providers yet refused to accommodate her religious beliefs.

It's not the first time that there's been evidence of government "hostility" to Christians. The U.S. Supreme Court, in fact, charged that the state of Colorado exhibited "hostility" to baker Jack Phillips when it tried to force him into an indoctrination program for refusing to promote messages on his cake artistry that violated his Christian faith.

Fundamental to the dispute is her faith that "one's sex is ordained by God, that one should love and care for the body that God gave him or her, and that one should not attempt to erase or to alter his or her sex, especially through drugs or surgical means," the judge said.

This is in direct conflict with the radical chemical-dispensing, body-mutilating transgender ideology that Joe Biden has imposed across America, through policy and rule.

The judge noted Kloosterman's reputation was such that patients requested her, and were willing to wait for an appointment with her, and that she "gladly served people of all beliefs and backgrounds and was committed to giving the best possible care to all her patients."

Further, her contract said specifically that the hospital "shall not have the right to direct [her] to take or omit any act which conflicts with such medical judgment in the care of patients."

She declined to support the transgender ideologies as her medical conclusion was that those procedures "often lead to negative clinical outcomes such as bone density loss, infection, nerve damage, chronic pain, loss of sexual and urinary functions, psychological trauma and other serious complications.'

However, she cooperated with even the corporation's insistence of "training on serving LGTBQ+ patients" until that demanded that she change her faith to "affirm" those alternative lifestyle choices.

It was at that point she requested a religious accommodation and was fired.

This was after the company's "DEI director," Thomas Pierce, called her "evil" and demanded that "by using a patient's name instead of his or her preferred pronouns, she would cause him or her to commit suicide," the judge ruled.

IMPORTANT NOTE TO WND READERS: Believe it or not, today's high priests of climate-change apocalypse are correct in predicting that in just a few short years, the earth will become miserable, wretched and almost uninhabitable by human beings. But the grim future they envision won't come about because of "catastrophic climate change," but rather, because of the implementation of their completely insane and truly catastrophic agenda.

As Greenpeace co-founder Dr. Patrick Moore recently admitted, "If they actually achieve Net Zero, at least 50% of the population would die of hunger and disease." Likewise, writes energy expert and author Alex Epstein: "Today's proposed policies to rapidly eliminate fossil fuel use would, if fully implemented, have truly apocalyptic consequences – making the world an impoverished, dangerous, and miserable place for most people."

Question: When the scientific case for global warming apocalypse consists primarily of a 1-degree Celsius rise in temperature over more than 130 years, what explains the obsession with an imminent, climate-caused end of the world?

Although many groups have been drawn into the Climate Change Cult – from the news media (which has warned of climate catastrophe, either global warming or a "new ice age," for over a century!), to innocent school kids indoctrinated by hysterical leftist teachers, to liberal Democrats who claim "climate change" will destroy the earth in a few years – the REAL villains are the national and global elites who KNOW the apocalyptic global warming religion is just a cruel hoax, but promote and exploit it as a means of accomplishing their ultimate goal: Transforming and ruling the world.

The heart and soul of today's bizarre, pagan climate-change religion, and the global elites' strategies for using it to rule all of mankind, is powerfully exposed and illuminated in the September issue of WND's critically acclaimed monthly Whistleblower magazine, an issue titled "CULT OF THE CLIMATE APOCALYPSE: The elites' breathtaking strategy for ruling the world." WHISTLEBLOWER is available in both the popular print edition and a state-of-the-art digital version, either single issues or discounted annual subscriptions.

For 25 years, WND has boldly brought you the news that really matters. If you appreciate our Christian journalists and their uniquely truthful reporting and analysis, please help us by becoming a WND Insider!

Content created by the WND News Center is available for re-publication without charge to any eligible news publisher that can provide a large audience. For licensing opportunities of our original content, please contact [email protected].

SUPPORT TRUTHFUL JOURNALISM. MAKE A DONATION TO THE NONPROFIT WND NEWS CENTER. THANK YOU!