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Photographer’s speech rights back in focus

Federal court in Kentucky gives sweeping victory to wedding photographer


Chelsey Nelson, owner of Chelsey Nelson Photography in Louisville, Kentucky Alliance Defending Freedom

Photographer’s speech rights back in focus

Chelsey Nelson started taking photos as a teenager—she said she was the “annoying” friend in high school who always had a camera in hand and grabbed pictures of her peers. She later opened her own wedding photography studio in Louisville, Ky. But when she turned her business into a limited liability company in 2019, she learned she could be at risk of punishment for incorporating her religious beliefs in her work.

A Louisville anti-discrimination law threatened severe civil penalties and monetary damages for businesses owners who didn’t provide services for same-sex wedding ceremonies, even though Nelson believed doing so would violate her Christian beliefs. The law also barred Nelson from blogging about her Biblical views on marriage on her studio’s website.

“When you’re a new business owner getting started and you’re worried that you might have a $10,000 fine come upon you just out of nowhere at any moment, just for trying to quietly operate your business in a way that’s consistent with your convictions, that obviously stifles creative energy,” Nelson said. “It made me fearful to grow my business, because the more well-known you are, the more people see what you stand for.”

The U.S. District Court for the Western District of Kentucky held Louisville accountable for violating Nelson’s speech and religious rights last Tuesday. The District Court ordered the city to award the photographer nominal damages and kept in place a previous ruling that prohibits Louisville from enforcing its law against Nelson.

In 2019, Nelson learned about Louisville’s Fairness Ordinance and realized two of its provisions restricted how she could express her faith at her studio. One of the ordinances barred the “denial of goods and services to members of protected classes,” which includes same-sex couples. The other prohibited her from publishing any indication or explanation that she wouldn’t photograph same-sex weddings or that might cause someone to feel unwelcome based on their sexual orientation.

“I don’t want to be quiet about my faith. I want to celebrate it,” Nelson said. “It influences how I approach, how I care for my clients, the type of message and story I’m telling on a wedding day to celebrate marriage between a man and a woman.”

Nelson said she was fearful of marketing or pursuing new opportunities for her studio as these could potentially attract the attention of the city and lead to officials penalizing her.

In 2019, she filed a lawsuit against the city, arguing its ordinances violated her constitutional rights. The District Court ruled in Nelson’s favor in 2022, though it didn’t grant her any damages. The city appealed its loss to the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, and Nelson also appealed, petitioning for damages. In 2023, as the case was being considered, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in 303 Creative v. Elenis that Colorado couldn’t enforce a similar law against a Christian web designer who wanted to create wedding sites.

The high court’s decision might have ensured an easy end to Nelson’s case, but three months before arguments in her 6th Circuit appeal, Louisville learned that Nelson had moved to Florida because of her husband’s new job. The city asked the 6th Circuit to send the case back to the District Court, arguing that Nelson’s case was moot in light of her move.

The 6th Circuit returned Nelson’s case to the District Court, keeping in place the 2022 decision that the Louisville ordinance violated Nelson’s rights but asking the lower court to determine if Nelson should be awarded damages.

Last week’s ruling from the District Court handed Nelson a victory, awarding her nominal damages. The court further emphasized that Louisville’s law “burdened her speech” and caused Nelson to self-censor for 10 months. “The court has no trouble finding that Nelson’s speech was chilled and that the law treats such self-censorship as a complete First Amendment injury,” Judge Benjamin Beaton wrote in the opinion.

The court ruled that Nelson’s move to Florida didn’t disqualify her case, since she continues to operate her business in Kentucky and her LLC is still organized under the state’s law. “Where Nelson lives makes no difference,” Beaton noted.

The ruling enforced that Louisville can’t compel Nelson to take photos or write blog posts that celebrate a view of marriage she doesn’t believe in, said Bryan Neihart, an attorney at Alliance Defending Freedom, which represented Nelson.

The nominal damages Nelson received in the case amount to only $1, but Neihart argued they are still significant. “Courts have typically awarded nominal damages to underscore how the government violated the law,” he said. “It also signals to the government that they can’t continue to restrict speech in this way because they’ve been required to pay some sort of remedy for that.”

Despite the Supreme Court’s ruling in 303 Creative, cases like Nelson’s are still playing out nationwide, Neihart noted. In May, a federal court in New York ruled in favor of photographer Emilee Carpenter, and the state settled with her in July.

For Nelson, the past six years in court have reminded her that nothing happens outside of God’s plan for her.

“Whether or not my case would have been successful or not, I am responsible for being faithful in my own life,” Nelson said. “I can’t control other people. I can’t control judges and what they decide.”


Liz Lykins

Liz is a correspondent covering First Amendment freedoms and education for WORLD. She is a World Journalism Institute graduate and earned her bachelor’s degree in journalism and Spanish from Ball State University. She and her husband currently travel the country full time.

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