CURE News and Clergy Blog News and Commentary for Christians
Chelsey Nelson, a Christian photographer and blogger in Kentucky who has been in court for years fighting for her First Amendment rights, has won her case.
Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF), which represents Nelson, announced that she has prevailed against the city of Louisville, Kentucky.
Nelson provides services for all kinds of people, but she exercises her religion freedom by declining requests to provide services for homosexual “weddings” in line with the Bible’s teachings about marriage and sexuality. She filed a lawsuit to stop enforcement of a city ordinance that would violate her First Amendment rights.
“The law requires me to become a spokesperson for the government’s currently favored view of marriage, rather than my own biblically informed views,” Nelson said.
A lower court ruled in Nelson’s favor, but the city of Louisville asked the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit to review its case. While the case was pending, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled 6-3 in a Christian business owner’s favor in 303 Creative v. Elenis. The court ruled that a public-accommodation law to compel an artist to speak or stay silent violated the Free Speech Clause of the First Amendment.
The Sixth Circuit sent the case back to the lower court in light of 303 Creative. The lower court ruled in Nelson’s favor again.
ADF said that Louisville’s law “prohibited Nelson from expressing her views on marriage on her studio’s website and threatened to compel her to create photographs and blogs celebrating a message about marriage she does not believe.”
But now Nelson is free to conduct her business in a way that does not conflict with her faith. Louisville must pay Nelson nominal damages for violating her rights.
