Assignment 3: Case Study: Ethical Decision Making

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February 3, 2012

A Counselor’s Convictions Put Her Profession on Trial By MARK OPPENHEIMER

In 2009, Julea Ward, a teacher and an evangelical Christian, was studying for a master’s

degree in counseling at Eastern Michigan University in Ypsilanti. As part of her training, she

was required to treat clients, and she expressed her reluctance to work with any who were in

same-sex relationships. A professor, heeding Ms. Ward’s wishes, referred a gay client to

another counselor.

That seemingly simple request became a problem for Ms. Ward when the university expelled

her for having made it. Ms. Ward sued, and her case raises the question of whether a

counselor’s religious convictions can disqualify her from the profession.

A federal court dismissed Ms. Ward’s claim of religious discrimination. But on Jan. 27, the

United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit ordered the lower court to rehear the

case, finding that Eastern Michigan “cannot point to any written policy that barred Ward

from requesting this referral.”

According to the Sixth Circuit decision, written by Judge Jeffrey S. Sutton, Ms. Ward

counseled her first two clients without incident. But when she “reviewed the file of the third

client, she noticed he sought counseling about a same-sex relationship.” Ms. Ward asked her

faculty supervisor, Yvonne Callaway, “(1) whether she should meet with the client and refer

him only if it became necessary — only if the counseling session required Ward to affirm the

client’s same-sex relationship — or (2) whether the school should reassign the client from

the outset.”

Professor Callaway reassigned the client, but then began disciplinary proceedings against

Ms. Ward. During the proceedings, professors challenged Ms. Ward’s interpretation of

Christianity, with one, Perry C. Francis, wondering if Ms. Ward could not give gay men and

lesbians “the same respect and honor that God would give them?”

The Sixth Circuit decision turns on how common it is to refer patients to other counselors.

Ms. Ward argues that one’s religious beliefs are a reasonable reason to refer a client, while

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the university argues that it has to train students to work with all kinds of clients. The

American Counseling Association filed a brief asserting that to habitually refer gay clients

would violate its ethical canon.

Ms. Ward referred questions to her lawyer, Jeremy Tedesco of the Alliance Defense Fund, a

Christian legal advocacy organization. Mr. Tedesco said that “if referrals are acceptable,

including for many nonreligious-based reasons, they can’t deny someone who has a religion-

based need to refer.” He said that Ms. Ward was not singling out gay men and lesbians, and

that she would also refuse to affirm heterosexuals who sought counseling about their

adultery.

“Does it require a Jewish counselor to affirm the religious beliefs of a Muslim client?” Mr.

Tedesco asked. He noted that the American Counseling Association allows its members to

choose not to work with terminally ill patients considering end-of-life options. That proves,

he said, that counselors are sometimes allowed to refuse to treat clients because of a fraught

ethical question — so why not when the question is sexuality, and the counselor is Christian?

What many of the briefs fail to investigate is the role of the counselor or therapist. Is it to

“affirm” the client’s beliefs, or to offer support and guidance, even to clients whose practices

one may find distasteful or morally wrong? Daniel Mach, a lawyer with the American Civil

Liberties Union, which filed a brief in support of Eastern Michigan, said that the canons of

the profession rightly put the needs of clients ahead of the sensibilities of counselors.

“Nobody should be forced to change her religious beliefs or be punished for her faith,” Mr.

Mach said. However, he said, referring a client to another counselor is not a neutral act. He

pointed out that high school counselors may be the only compassionate adults available to

gay, bisexual or transgender youths, and that turning away such a youth in crisis “could be

devastating.”

Douglas C. Haldeman, a Seattle psychologist and a former chairman of the American

Psychological Association’s committee on lesbian, gay and bisexual concerns, said the court’s

emphasis on referral was misplaced.

“The matter of concern,” Dr. Haldeman said, “is, we don’t train our students in

discriminatory patterns of treatment, and we don’t permit them. We don’t say, ‘You can’t

treat Muslims’ or ‘You can’t treat black people.’ ”

Mr. Tedesco, Ms. Ward’s lawyer, agreed, to a point. “If a person said, ‘I’m going to refer all

black people who come through my door,’ that would be problematic,” he said. But Ms.

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Ward “would have asked for the same referral if it were a heterosexual whose practices went

beyond the bounds of biblical morality.”

But Mr. Mach, the A.C.L.U. lawyer, pointed out that the counselor who seeks to avoid gay

people — or adulterers, or those having premarital sex — has an unworkable view of how the

profession works.

“To say, ‘I will start treating them, but if the discussion turns to matters of relationships, at

that point, I will refer them away’ — that misapprehends the nature of the counseling

relationship, in which you don’t always know where the discussion will lead,” Mr. Mach said.

“You may start out talking about an eating disorder and then, a couple sessions in, that veers

toward a discussion of sexuality.”

In its decision, the Sixth Circuit mentioned another recent case, Keeton v. Anderson-Wiley,

in which Jennifer Keeton, a counseling student at Augusta State University, in Georgia, was

required to enter a remediation program because she said she planned to tell gay clients that

homosexuality was wrong. In December, a federal appeals court ruled that Augusta State

had done nothing wrong in removing Ms. Keeton, who had refused to enter remediation,

from its program.

According to the Sixth Circuit, Ms. Ward’s case was totally different, because she was only

asking to refer certain clients. “Instead of insisting on changing her clients,” the decision

reads, “Ward asked only that the university not change her.”

E-mail: [email protected]

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