- A federal appeals court ruled Jan. 6 that Christian ministry Yakima Union Gospel Mission may choose to hire only employees who share its Christian beliefs.
- The unanimous decision from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit held that the U.S. Constitution protects religious organizations’ right to hire co-religionists.
- The ruling blocks enforcement of the Washington Law Against Discrimination against the ministry. Legal nonprofit Alliance Defending Freedom praised the decision as a win for religious freedom.
A federal appeals court ruled Jan. 6 that a Washington Christian ministry can exclusively hire employees who share its religious beliefs, bringing an end to a nearly three-year-long lawsuit against a state law that the organization argued violated religious freedom.
CatholicVote previously reported that Christian nonprofit Yakima Union Gospel Mission sued in 2023 over Washington’s Law Against Discrimination, which barred religious organizations from refusing to hire individuals who lead lifestyles or uphold values in direct conflict with Christian beliefs.
Yakima Union Gospel Mission argued that it has a constitutional right to only hire like-minded employees. According to its website, the right is fundamental to its operation as a Christian ministry because it seeks “to collectively share its religious ideals” and therefore “can only hire employees (who are its hands and feet and its messengers) who agree with, adhere to, and live out the Mission’s religious beliefs and practices.”
A district court issued a preliminary injunction in November 2024 that allowed the ministry to continue hiring only Christians while the case proceeded. According to a Jan. 6 Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF) press release, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit unanimously ruled in favor of the mission, protecting the ministry from the reinterpretation of the state law.
“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 wrote in its opinion, according to ADF.
ADF Senior Counsel Jeremiah Galus, who argued before the court, praised the ruling.
“Religious organizations shouldn’t be punished for exercising their constitutionally protected freedom,” Galus said in the release, “to hire employees who are aligned with and live out their shared religious beliefs.”
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