A US federal judge has thrown out an appeal against a decision by Eastern Michigan University to expel a student from a master’s degree program because of her religious views against homosexual acts.

Julea Ward of Detroit was removed from Eastern Michigan’s counselling course because she refused to counsel homosexual clients as part of her course work, saying her Christian beliefs hold homosexual acts to be morally wrong.

She asked that another counsellor be assigned her prospective client.

After the university decided that Ward’s refusal violated university policy and a professional counselling organisation code, it removed her from the counselling program. Ward sued the Ypsilanti school last year, alleging a violation of her constitutional rights.

U.S. District Judge George Caram Steeh ruled in favour of the university and granted it summary judgment this week.

“Plaintiff was not required to change her views or religious beliefs; she was required to set them aside in the counsellor-client relationship – a neutral, generally applicable expectation of all counsellors-to-be under the ACA (American Counseling Association) standard,” the Detroit Free Press quoted Steeh as writing in his 48-page opinion.

Alliance Defense Fund attorney David French said the group would appeal the decision.

According to the Alliance Defense Fund website, “The school dismissed Julea Ward from the program because she would not agree prior to a counselling session to affirm a client’s homosexual behavior.”

French said, “Christian students shouldn’t be penalised for holding to their beliefs. When a public university has a prerequisite of affirming homosexual behaviour as morally good in order to obtain a degree, the school is stepping over the legal line. Julea did the responsible thing and followed her supervising professor’s advice to have the client referred to a counsellor who did not have a conscience issue with the very matter to be discussed in counselling.”