Michigan hospital will change LGBT policies, pay fired physician assistant $400,000 after lawsuit

A major health system in Michigan will make a six-figure payout to one of its former physician assistants whom the institution fired after she refused to adhere to LGBT-related policies there.

The University of Michigan Health-West system will also create a religious accommodation for employees who do not wish to assist with transgender-related “transitions” or procedures or use LGBT pronouns in a way that violates their religious beliefs.

The legal group First Liberty Institute announced the settlement on July 29, revealing that Valerie Kloosterman and her attorneys would receive $410,000 in damages from the health institution.

Kloosterman, a Christian, had worked at the hospital for 17 years starting in 2004. She was fired in August 2021 after she refused to use LGBT pronouns and make referrals for transgender-related “transition” drugs and surgeries, according to a 2022 lawsuit filed in U.S. district court.

The suit alleged that hospital workers “denigrated [Kloosterman’s] religious beliefs” and “blamed her for gender dysphoria-related suicides” before firing her. The hospital “had no interest in working toward a cooperative, religiously tolerant solution,” the suit said.

Kloosterman on July 29 said in her work she had wished to “provide the best care possible to my patients without being forced to violate my Christian beliefs.”

The 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,” she said.

Numerous U.S. institutions in recent years have faced lawsuits and major payouts involving disputes over LGBT ideology. 

In 2025 the University of Louisville agreed to pay a former professor nearly $1.6 million after it demoted him and refused to renew his contract following off-campus expert testimony in which he spoke about the dangers of performing transgender operations on children.

The same year, United Airlines reached a settlement with a flight attendant who alleged that the airline fired him over expressing support for Catholic teachings on marriage and gender identity.

In 2022, meanwhile, a professor at Shawnee State University received $400,000 after he faced disciplinary action for refusing to use transgender pronouns for a student who identified as the opposite sex.