Michigan Supreme Court hears arguments in discrimination case involving former Calvin professor

The Michigan Supreme Court heard arguments over whether Joseph Kuilema, fired by Calvin University in 2022 after officiating a same-sex wedding, can pursue an associational discrimination claim under the Elliott-Larsen Civil Rights Act. His attorney argued the law's ban on firing someone 'because of sex' implicitly covers firing them over the sex of people they associate with, pointing to existing precedent on race-based associational discrimination.

Calvin University's attorney countered that the statute's plain text requires discrimination based on the plaintiff's own protected characteristic, not someone else's, and warned that extending the law could entangle courts in sorting which associations count as protected.

The Court of Appeals had previously ruled against Kuilema, finding his sex was irrelevant to his firing since the outcome would have been the same regardless of whether he was a man or a woman. Kuilema, now at Grand Valley State University, said he hopes the case will clarify the law's reach for sex discrimination the way earlier rulings clarified it for race.

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