Counselling student sues after Missouri State expelled him over Christian beliefs
A Christian student is suing Missouri State
University for ejecting him from its Masters in Counselling program in a case
with huge implications for the counselling and psychotherapy professions.
Andrew Cash was a student nearing completion of
MSU’s Masters of Counselling program in 2011 when he served his internship at
the Springfield Marriage and Family Institute (SMFI), a Christian counselling
center where he worked with couples while under supervision of the accredited
staff.
Cash got into trouble when he persuaded one of his
teachers to let the institute give a class presentation on Christian
counselling. One of Cash’s classmates asked the director what he would do if
asked to counsel a same-sex couple. He responded that he would counsel them as
individuals but not as a couple because of his religious convictions about
marriage being necessarily heterosexual.
Shortly SMFI was removed from MSU’s list of
approved supervising agencies, Cash’s 51 hours of supervised counselling were
expunged from his record, and, as part of a re-education program, he was
required to audit two courses he had already passed, and submit to 10 hours of
personal counselling for “counter transference issues.” This refers to a
counsellor unconsciously “transferring” emotions onto patients that he
initially felt towards people in his personal life.
But Cash fought to have his hours with SMFI
recognized and appealed several times up the administrative ladder at the
university. He also continued to defend SMFI’s approach, which he deemed proper
for a Christian. He told them that he too would refer same-sex couples to
others because “his approach to counselling is centered on his core
beliefs, values and Christian worldview and these would not be congruent with
the likely values and needs of a gay couple.”
But according to his complaint filed this week in
Missouri by his lawyers at the Chicago-based Thomas More Society, his faculty
advisor told him that “he could not hold these views, which she deemed to be
unethical, and which, she asserted, contradicted the American Counselling
Association's code of ethics as discriminatory toward gay persons.”
Cash is suing the university’s board of directors
and three faculty members for violating his “freedom of thought, speech,
religion and association,” while causing “tormenting, devastating, crushing”
emotional distress and financial hardship by wrecking his chance at a
counselling career. He is seeking unspecified punitive damages and
reinstatement in the program.
MSU spokeswoman Suzanne Shaw said the university
had not seen the lawsuit, but added, “The university strictly prohibits
discrimination on the basis of religion or any other protected class.”
The issue is much larger, extending not only to
other counselling students in U.S., Canadian and British universities, but to
practising counsellors whose professional bodies have ethics codes forbidding
discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation, while providing no
conscientious objection exemption for Christians.
Neither the American Counselling Association nor
the American Association of Marriage and Family Therapists have conscience
clauses. The AAMFT, moreover, attacked Tennessee’s new religious freedom
restoration law, because it explicitly protects counsellors.
The AAMFT stated on its website, “We believe that
the legislation, as it is currently written, would likely create opportunities
for discrimination to occur. Any legislation that creates such opportunities,
whether intentional or unintentional, is not in the best interests of
Tennesseans.”
Medical professional bodies routinely provide
conscience clauses so that doctors need not perform abortions, though they also
often require referrals. The legalization of euthanasia in Canada by a court
ruling has meant a debate over whether Christian doctors can be required to
perform euthanasia or to refer patients to other doctors who will.