A Christian photographer who declined to provide services for same-sex weddings has secured a significant legal settlement following a prolonged dispute over a local nondiscrimination ordinance she argued would conflict with her religious beliefs.
Officials in Louisville agreed to pay $800,000 in legal fees to photographer Chelsey Nelson as part of the resolution.
The agreement, submitted Tuesday to the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Kentucky in its Louisville division, follows a ruling issued six months earlier in which the court sided with Nelson in her challenge to the city’s ordinance banning discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity.
Nelson, who identifies as a committed Christian and affirms a traditional biblical view of marriage between one man and one woman, initiated the lawsuit out of concern that the ordinance would require her to photograph same-sex weddings against her convictions.
She argued that the policy violated protections under the First Amendment, specifically the Free Speech and Free Exercise clauses, along with the Kentucky Religious Freedom Restoration Act. A federal judge ultimately ruled in her favor last fall.
The settlement was publicly confirmed Tuesday in a statement released by Alliance Defending Freedom, the legal group that represented Nelson throughout the case.
In 2022, a federal court initially ruled in her favor by blocking enforcement of the ordinance against her, though it declined to award nominal damages at that time.
Following that decision, Nelson appealed to the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit, while city officials also pursued their own appeal of the ruling.
During the appeals process in 2023, the U.S. Supreme Court issued its decision in 303 Creative v. Elenis, which held that governments may not use “expressive activity to compel speech.”
That ruling established a key precedent in religious liberty cases and led the Sixth Circuit to send Nelson’s case back to the lower court for reconsideration in light of the new legal standard.
Two years later, the federal court upheld the previous ruling in favor of Nelson while awarding her nominal damages.
