Susan Grettenberger
National Association of Social Workers,
Michigan Chapter
Through my many years as a licensed social worker and professor teaching future social workers, I’ve always followed a code of ethics that requires social workers to provide services to all clients.
But a bill being considered in the Michigan Senate would put a professional’s religious beliefs ahead of the common good by letting individuals avoid abiding by any state or local law they say “burdens” their exercise of religion. This bill could result in people not getting human services they may desperately need, even when those services are paid for by all of us through our tax dollars.
The Michigan Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA), as spelled out in House Bill 5958, would allow a social worker to legally refuse to provide services to someone based on the social worker’s religious beliefs. This could leave people, particularly in rural Michigan, without needed treatment options or services as they struggle with addiction, depression, family violence and other serious issues.
Under the National Association of Social Workers Code of Ethics, social workers are obligated to provide services to the vulnerable. The code prohibits them from practicing, condoning, facilitating or collaborating with any form of discrimination based on race, marital status, political belief, religion, immigration status, and mental or physical disability, for example.
Yet if RFRA becomes law, social workers would have the legal right to violate the profession’s ethical obligations. For instance, social workers opposed to war on religious grounds could refuse to serve military families. Child welfare workers, and potentially whole agencies, could refuse to serve families, or even foster children, who identify as lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender. Social workers whose religious beliefs forbid use of alcohol could refuse a client in need of help with addiction. These might seem like absurd examples, but they would be protected in Michigan after the passage of RFRA.
As I told the House Judiciary Committee earlier this month, it would be a tragedy if people who are already hurting are further harmed because social workers refuse to counsel them. My hope is that social workers would follow the Social Work Code of Ethics even with this law in place, but as we’ve seen under the federal RFRA, the law can be used to deny services or access to care.
The possibility that Michigan could pass and enforce a law that protects discrimination is deeply troubling. It would open the door to costly lawsuits filed by individuals contending that their religious rights trump our laws and fairness, and leave many Michigan residents without the guarantee that they can receive help from social workers who are paid with their taxes.
I urge our legislators and Governor Rick Snyder to keep this ill-advised bill from becoming law.
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Susan Grettenberger is a licensed social worker and vice president of social policy for the National Association of Social Workers, Michigan Chapter.
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