Business · Nationwide · August 11, 2026
Christian Medic Fired Over Transgender Policy Wins Settlement
What Alinsky tactic is being used
2 of the thirteen rules are in play here — campaigns rarely run just one.
Rule 13
“Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, and polarize it.”
After Kloosterman asked for a religious exemption from the new gender-identity training, the response described in her lawsuit was aimed at her alone: a single meeting her lawyers called an "interrogation," and a DEI official who allegedly called her "evil" and a "liar." Seventeen years of good reviews were set aside and one named employee became the face of the policy question. The mechanism is isolation — one person answering for a position many colleagues quietly share.
Counter-Rule 13 · Radical Solidarity
Stand publicly with whoever has been singled out. Isolation is the whole mechanism; refusing it disarms the tactic.
If someone in your unit files a conscience or accommodation request this month, do not let them sit in that meeting alone: ask to attend as a witness, or ask for a union or association representative, and write a dated note of who said what. If you share the objection, put your own request in writing the same week so the employer is answering two letters rather than isolating one person. Say the colleague's name out loud in the staff meeting rather than letting the matter be handled privately.
Rule 4
“Make the enemy live up to its own book of rules.”
The case turned on the gap between the employer's stated commitments and its practice: a hospital whose nondiscrimination language covers religion allegedly told a physician assistant she must personally affirm statements and referrals against her faith. Held to its own book, University of Michigan Health-West settled for $410,000 and agreed to adopt a written religious-accommodation policy stating that employees will not be required to affirm gender-identity statements, participate in referrals or procedures, or use pronouns against conscience. The tactic worked because the gap was real and documented.
Counter-Rule 4 · Radical Integrity
Close the gap between stated values and actual practice before anyone else finds it. This tactic only works where the gap is real.
Pull your employer's nondiscrimination statement and check whether "religion" appears in the protected list; if it does, quote that sentence back in any written accommodation request, along with Title VII's accommodation duty as the EEOC states it (eeoc.gov/religious-discrimination). Then close the gap on your own side: keep charting, coverage and patient courtesy above criticism, and ask for reassignment of the specific act you cannot perform rather than exemption from the patient — so the only thing on the record is the narrow request.
Chapter 3 sets out the rules; Chapter 15 answers each of them in turn. This is that pairing applied to this story.
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