Michigan Hospital Pays 410K After Firing Christian PA in Transgender Policy Fight [WATCH]

A Michigan hospital has agreed to pay $410,000 to settle a religious discrimination lawsuit brought by Valerie Kloosterman, a physician assistant who said she was fired after refusing to bend her Christian convictions to a workplace gender identity policy.

Kloosterman sued University of Michigan Health West after her August 2021 termination, saying the hospital punished her because she would not affirm ideas about transgender patients that violated her faith.

“All I wanted to do was provide the best care possible to my patients without being forced to violate my Christian beliefs,” Kloosterman said in a statement shared with Fox News Digital.

Her case quickly became another flashpoint in the national battle over whether medical professionals can be forced to mouth political and ideological claims as a condition of keeping their jobs.

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In the modern medical bureaucracy, apparently excellent patient care is not enough if someone refuses to genuflect before the latest gender orthodoxy.

First Liberty Institute, which represented Kloosterman, said she had a strong employment record and received positive performance reviews before she objected to mandatory gender identity training.

The group said she requested a religious accommodation because the training required her to affirm statements about gender identity that conflicted with her Christian beliefs.

According to First Liberty, the hospital fired Kloosterman just three weeks after she asked for that accommodation.

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The legal group said UMHW made no serious effort to work with her, which is precisely the sort of thing federal religious liberty protections are supposed to prevent.

The lawsuit painted an ugly picture of what allegedly happened after Kloosterman raised her objections.

It said hospital officials called her into a meeting, disparaged her religious beliefs, called her “evil” and a “liar,” told her she could not bring her Christian beliefs into the workplace, and accused her of contributing to suicides among people with gender dysphoria.

That is not respectful dialogue.

That is the kind of ideological pressure campaign Americans have watched spread through schools, corporations, government offices, and now medical institutions.

The settlement requires UMHW to create a religious accommodation policy that complies with the law.

It also requires the hospital to inform and train employees, provide reasonable religious accommodations without retaliation, and pay damages and fees to Kloosterman and her attorneys.

“This new policy ensures that providers of faith and employees at UMHW will receive religious accommodations so that they can provide excellent care consistent with their medical judgment, because all patients are created in the image of God,” Kloosterman said in her statement to Fox News Digital.

WATCH:

The case arrives amid a broader national clash over gender identity mandates and religious liberty.

The Department of Justice has also joined Catholic nuns in a lawsuit challenging a New York gender identity law that allegedly forces a Catholic nursing facility to assign rooms based on gender identity rather than biological sex.

For many Americans of faith, the issue is not whether patients receive care.

The issue is whether government-backed institutions and powerful employers can compel workers to affirm beliefs they do not hold.

“Title VII prohibits employers from discriminating against and punishing employees for their faith,” Kayla Toney, counsel at First Liberty, said in a statement shared with Fox News Digital.

Toney also defended Kloosterman as a dedicated medical professional who treated patients with care.

“Valerie is an exceptional physician assistant who cares for each of her patients. Employers cannot drive out people like Valerie just because of their sincere religious beliefs.”

Fox News Digital said it reached out to University of Michigan Health West for comment.

The settlement does not erase what happened, but it does send a message that religious Americans are not required to surrender their conscience at the hospital door.

The left has spent years insisting that every institution must serve its cultural agenda, even when that means pushing out Christians who simply want to do their jobs.

In this case, that pressure came with a $410,000 price tag.

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