The city of Louisville, Kentucky, will pay $800,000 to a Christian photographer and blogger who won a religious freedom lawsuit over an antidiscrimination ordinance that would have required her to photograph same-sex weddings in spite of her religious objections.
In October 2025, a federal court ruled that the ordinance contained two provisions that violated the First Amendment rights of the photographer, Chelsey Nelson. The city agreed to pay the fee through a settlement negotiated by her legal counsel at Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF).
“The government cannot force Americans to say things they don’t believe,” ADF Senior Counsel Bryan Neihart said in a statement on March 24.
“For almost six years, Louisville officials tried to do just that by threatening to force Chelsey to promote views about marriage that violated her religious beliefs,” he said. “Louisville’s threats contradicted bedrock First Amendment principles which leave decisions about what to say with the people, not the government.”
“This settlement should teach Louisville that violating the U.S. Constitution can be expensive,” Neihart added.
The ordinance prohibited “the denial of goods and services to members of protected classes,” which included people with same-sex attraction, according to the ruling last year.
It also violated Nelson’s First Amendment rights through the publication provision, which prevented her “from writing and publishing any indication or explanation that she wouldn’t photograph same-sex weddings or that otherwise causes someone to feel unwelcome or undesirable based on his or her sexual orientation or gender identity.”
The court found that both provisions “limit Nelson’s freedom to express her beliefs about marriage” and that the ordinance forced her to suffer “a First Amendment injury.”
The ruling built on the U.S. Supreme Court’s landmark 303 Creative LLC v. Elenis ruling, which struck down a Colorado antidiscrimination law because it would have forced a web designer to create websites for same-sex weddings in spite of her religious beliefs.