Gender ideology suffers setbacks in counseling and medicine with legal settlements, reopened case

Health system pays fired physician assistant $410,000, introduces religious accommodations to opt out of "gender affirming care," preferred pronouns. Michigan "conversion therapy" law falls and Washington's is back in court.

The application of gender ideology to psychology and medicine suffered blows in the Midwest and West Coast this past week, as Michigan and its flagship university threw in the towel in separate litigation and Washington found itself dragged back into court.

The Great Lakes State agreed its statutory ban on so-called conversion therapy for minors — "client-driven" conversations with a counselor to resolve gender confusion — is unconstitutional in light of the Supreme Court's Chiles decision this spring against a "materially identical" Colorado law as applied to talk therapy, Thursday's court order says.

The 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals previously blocked Michigan's law as a "content- and viewpoint-discriminatory restriction upon speech."

Michigan Catholic Charities branches and counselor Emily McJones have "demonstrated success on the merits" of their discrimination claims, U.S. District Judge Jane Beckering wrote in the stipulated judgment.

A Christian counselor perduaded the federal judge who threw out his lawsuit against Washington's doppelganger of Colorado's law to resurrect it, over the objections of The Evergreen State and Equal Rights Washington, which intervened in the case.

U.S. District Judge Tiffany Cartwright took two months to grant Brian Tingley's motion to reopen the case in light of Chiles, which rejected the 9th Circuit's reasoning in upholding Washington's law.

That occurred a week after Tingley filed a motion for preliminary injunction. He and a broad range of religious and secular supporters failed to get SCOTUS to review the case in 2023.

Oregon suddenly backed off a $90,000 fine against counselor Frank Canepa for refusing to affirm his client's lesbian relationship in the wake of Chiles as well.

Heartening medical professionals who oppose so-called gender affirming care, University of Michigan Health-West paid physician assistant Valerie Kloosterman $410,000 for firing her for refusing to help patients get puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones and surgical removal of healthy body parts and for spurning their preferred pronouns.

It's a long-delayed victory for Kloosterman, who sued nearly four years ago on both religious and medical grounds. The 6th Circuit returned the case to Judge Beckering's court a year ago, saying she should have denied UMHW's proposed arbitration "after a year of litigation and after the defendants got a preview of how the merits might progress in court."

Kloosterman's lawyers at First Liberty Institute showed the settlement to Just the News to confirm its terms as they described it Wednesday, on the condition that the agreement remain unpublished.

She's keeping more than half the settlement for herself — $125,000 each for "non-economic (emotional distress) damages" and for lost wages — while First Liberty gets $147,433 and co-counsel Clement & Murphy $12,567.

UMHW is also adopting a "Religious Accommodation Policy" that protects employees from compelled speech and participation in medical care related to gender identity and pledges no adverse action against them for seeking accommodations, as long as they state their objections to the health system and supervisors.

"In mandatory trainings, employees will not be required to personally affirm statements about gender identity that violate their sincerely-held religious beliefs," it says. They don't have to "perform or assist" in "gender transition treatments" including procedures, medications and referrals, or use pronouns in a way that violates their religious belief or conscience.

The health system will publish the written policy alongside others, promulgate it to employees and incorporate it in UMHW's annual mandatory training for the next three years.

"All I wanted to do was provide the best care possible to my patients without being forced to violate my Christian beliefs," Kloosterman said, praising the new policy for letting employees "provide excellent care consistent with their medical judgment" and recognize patients as "created in the image of God."

Payments coming to Catholic Charities as 'prevailing parties'

The latest moves in litigation stem from judicial rebukes to the President Biden-nominated judges who sided with the states— directly from her appeals court in Beckering's cases and indirectly in Cartwright's from SCOTUS overruling the 9th Circuit.

Michigan's law remained blocked, and the case put on hold as SCOTUS considered Kaley Chiles' challenge to Colorado's law.

The stipulated judgment signed by Beckering confirms that Catholic Charities are the "prevailing parties" in their content- and viewpoint-discrimination claim, making them eligible for attorney's fees, costs and expenses. Those amounts have already been resolved in a separate settlement, and religious liberty law firm Becket didn't answer a request by Just the News to see it.

Michigan's "surrender confirms that the Constitution and the best available science are on the side of counselors who help children find peace with their bodies," Becket senior counsel Luke Goodrich said. "States still trying to censor that care should take note.”

Judge Cartwright's resurrection of the Washington lawsuit is only documented in a July 30 "minute entry" following a hearing on counselor Tingley's motion to reopen. She reopened only the first count, denial of Tingley's free speech rights.

The state is depriving young people suffering through the "epidemic of mental health issues" a counselor "who shares their faith," Alliance Defending Freedom Senior Counsel Johannes Widmalm-Delphonse, representing Tingley before the court, said after the reopening. "We’re pleased the court reined in Washington state’s ideological crusade."

Repeatedly conflates coercive practices with talk-only, client-led therapy

Washington Attorney General Nicholas Brown unsuccessfully argued the Chiles precedent "is not an extraordinary circumstance that justifies re-opening the judgment," citing the state's "compelling interest" in protecting minors from "physical and psychological harms posed by conversion therapy."

His opposition repeatedly conflates talk-only, client-led practices like Tingley's — upheld 8-1 by the Supreme Court in Chiles — with the verbally and physically coercive practices originally understood as conversion therapy. (Equal Rights Washington's one-paragraph brief says it "incorporates by reference the arguments" in Brown's filing.)

"It doesn’t work: over the past several decades, it has been thoroughly discredited by leading medical and mental health organizations, providers, and academic researchers," Brown wrote.

"Research overwhelmingly concludes that it increases depression and suicidal ideation," he said, citing a 2020 study by the LGBTQ youth nonprofit Trevor Project in the peer-reviewed American Journal of Public Health. Its research is often challenged: Science journalist Jesse Singal said the group relies on unproven assumptions and "irrelevant citations."

Washington response to Tingley motion to reopen.pdf

Because Cartwright's ruling was consistent with 9th Circuit precedent and those of "most" other federal appeals courts at the time — "every other court to consider a state law restricting conversion therapy as part of professional licensing schemes had upheld the law" — the judgment should stand, Brown wrote.

He noted SCOTUS rejected reopening "a prisoner’s habeas petition on statute of limitations grounds" even after it changed "the interpretation of the governing law’s statute of limitations," because the district court's ruling was consistent with its appeals court's "then-prevailing interpretation" of the law.

"Nearly five years have passed from this Court’s dismissal order and the Chiles decision" and the state and public have "significant interests" in a judgment protecting minors from conversion therapy, Brown wrote, again ignoring Tingley's actual practice.

He claimed the law "passes constitutional muster under a strict scrutiny analysis" because it "addresses a compelling interest, is narrowly tailored, and is the least-restrictive alternative."

If Cartwright disagrees, she should limit Tingley's relief to the exact claim in Chiles, an "as-applied free speech challenge," Brown said. SCOTUS "did not address third-party standing, free exercise, or vagueness at all."