A federal appeals court has ruled in favor of a Christian ministry seeking to preserve its ability to hire only employees who agree with and live out its religious beliefs, barring Washington state from applying a nondiscrimination law to the organization’s faith-based hiring decisions.
In a unanimous decision issued Tuesday, a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit determined that Union Gospel Mission of Yakima may require employees to align with its religious convictions.
The ministry filed suit against the state attorney general and the Washington State Human Rights Commission, arguing that the Washington Law Against Discrimination infringes on its First Amendment rights.
That law bars employment discrimination on multiple grounds, including sexual orientation and gender identity. Union Gospel maintained that enforcement could expose it to legal action because it requires staff to affirm and follow Christian beliefs and conduct, including “abstaining from any sexual conduct outside of biblical marriage between one man and one woman.”
Under the ruling, Washington officials are prohibited from enforcing the law against Union Gospel only in matters related to hiring employees who share its religious beliefs, while all other provisions of the statute remain applicable to the ministry.
The ministry was represented by Alliance Defending Freedom, which welcomed the decision in a statement released Tuesday.
“Religious organizations shouldn’t be punished for exercising their constitutionally protected freedom to hire employees who are aligned with and live out their shared religious beliefs,” said ADF Senior Counsel Jeremiah Galus.
“Yakima Union Gospel Mission exists to spread the gospel of Jesus Christ through its homeless shelter, addiction-recovery programs, outreach efforts, meal services, and health clinics,” Galus added. “The 9th Circuit correctly ruled that the First Amendment protects the mission’s freedom to hire fellow believers who share that calling.”
Tuesday’s decision follows a legal battle that began in 2023. Although a federal district court initially dismissed the case, it later granted a preliminary injunction preventing the state from enforcing the law against the ministry, a ruling the state appealed.
By rejecting that appeal and upholding the lower court’s injunction, the Ninth Circuit marked the latest chapter in the case.
Union Gospel said it pursued litigation after the Washington Supreme Court narrowly interpreted the religious exemption in the nondiscrimination law as applying only to “ministers,” effectively requiring compliance when hiring non-ministerial staff. At the time, the ministry was seeking to fill more than 50 non-ministerial positions.
In siding with Union Gospel, the appeals court relied on the “Church Autonomy Doctrine,” citing long-standing precedent that limits government involvement in internal religious decisions. The court noted that decades of case law establish that “The First and Fourteenth Amendments permit hierarchical religious organizations to establish their own rules and regulations for internal discipline and government” and that “the Constitution requires that civil courts accept their decisions as binding upon them.”
“If a religious organization’s hiring of co-religionists for non-ministerial positions rests on its sincerely held religious beliefs, then the church autonomy doctrine forbids government interference with that hiring decision,” the court stated in its opinion.
