Louisville pays $800K to settle with Christian photographer who won't work same-sex weddings

By Ryan Foley, Christian Post Reporter Wednesday, March 25, 2026

A Christian photographer who does not wish to provide services to same-sex weddings has reached a large settlement after years of litigation over a nondiscrimination provision in a local law she feared would force her to violate her deeply held convictions. 

The city of Louisville, Kentucky, had agreed to pay $800,000 in attorney fees as part of a settlement with photographer Chelsey Nelson. The settlement, filed Tuesday in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Kentucky, Louisville Division, comes six months after the federal court sided with Nelson in her challenge to the city’s prohibition on discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity. 

Nelson, a devout Christian who believes in the biblical definition of marriage as a union between one man and one woman, filed a lawsuit against the city out of concern that the nondiscrimination law would force her to work as a photographer at same-sex weddings. She alleged that the law violated the Free Speech and Free Exercise clauses of the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, as well as the Kentucky Religious Freedom Restoration Act. Last fall, a federal judge agreed. 

The settlement was announced in a statement Tuesday from the conservative legal nonprofit Alliance Defending Freedom, which represented Nelson in the case. 

“The government cannot force Americans to say things they don’t believe,” said Alliance Defending Freedom Senior Counsel Bryan Neihart. “For almost six years, Louisville officials tried to do just that by threatening to force Chelsey to promote views about marriage that violate her religious beliefs. 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.” 

Nelson’s litigation against Louisville dates back several years. While the federal court first ruled in Nelson’s favor in 2022 by prohibiting the city from enforcing the nondiscrimination law against her, it denied her request for nominal damages. This prompted her to appeal the decision to the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, while the city simultaneously appealed the ruling. 

In 2023, while the decision was on appeal, the U.S. Supreme Court issued a ruling in 303 Creative v. Elenis prohibiting states from using “expressive activity to compel speech.” The 303 Creative decision became a binding precedent in religious liberty cases and prompted the 6th Circuit to remand Nelson’s case to the district court for further proceedings. Two years later, the federal court upheld the previous ruling in favor of Nelson while awarding her nominal damages.

Now that Nelson has received her nominal damages and the city has agreed to pay attorney fees on top of that, her litigation against Louisville has come to an end. Alliance Defending Freedom previously identified nominal damages as “a type of compensation that remedy past harm, prevent future misconduct, and vindicate constitutional freedoms.”