City: Hitching Post exempt from anti-bias law

Donald and Lynn Knapp, the owners of an Idaho marriage ceremony business, are working to reach a settlement with the city of Coeur d’Alene after officials promised last week to exempt their company from a sexual orientation nondiscrimination ordinance.

Alliance Defending Freedom, which is representing the Knapps, has asked the city to amend the ordinance to define what companies would be able to decline to provide their services to homosexual couples on religious grounds.

“We certainly welcome our clients being exempted from the ordinance,” ADF attorney Jeremy Tedesco told me Tuesday. “But … with a criminal law like this you need clarity.” He said Coeur d’Alene officials agreed to review the language of the ordinance.

City officials did not immediately return calls asking them to confirm they were reviewing the ordinance.

The Knapps sued the city earlier this month after officials twice told them they’d be violating the nondiscrimination ordinance if they refused to conduct a ceremony for a gay couple. Violation of the ordinance carries a daily penalty of up to 180 days in jail and up to $1,000 in fines. Homosexual marriage is now legal in Idaho thanks to a federal court decision this summer overruling the state’s constitutional amendment defining marriage as between a man and a woman.

The Hitching Post, the Knapps’ for-profit company, provides wedding ceremonies to couples for fees of between $80 and $102. Donald and Lynn Knapp are both ordained ministers in the International Church of the Foursquare Gospel, and officiate “small, short, intimate, and private weddings for couples who desire a traditional Christian wedding ceremony,” according to the company’s website. Although the Knapps accept walk-ins at their business and don’t require premarital counseling, they give their clients CDs with Bible-based messages about marriage.

The Knapps have declined to marry same-sex couples several times, including on Oct. 17, the day they filed their lawsuit. (As recently as last Thursday, a woman called Coeur d'Alene city police and complained the Hitching Post had refused to provide a same-sex wedding, prompting police to make a “routine” call to the Knapps.)

A few days after ADF filed a lawsuit claiming the Coeur d’Alene ordinance violated the Knapps’ free speech and religious rights under the U.S. Constitution, city attorney Michael Gridley sent a letter to ADF saying the Knapps would be exempt from the ordinance as long as they were operating a “legitimate not-for-profit religious corporation.”

But the Hitching Post is organized as a for-profit corporation, even though the Knapps view and conduct their business as a Christian ministry. The implication of Gridley’s letter was that the Hitching Post would indeed be subject to the nondiscrimination ordinance.

Last week, city officials backtracked and said the Hitching Post, because it was a religious corporation, was exempt from the nondiscrimination ordinance. Gridley also promised he would not prosecute the Knapps. The Kootenai County Task Force on Human Relations, which originally promoted the nondiscrimination ordinance, agreed the Hitching Post should be exempt.

“The city’s changing its tune,” Tedesco said. “Our lawsuit forced them to take a different position.”

It’s still unclear exactly which for-profit businesses the nondiscrimination ordinance might or might not apply to, Tedesco said, adding that the city needs to address the larger constitutional question of whether people lose their First Amendment rights as soon as they open a for-profit business.

“The thing needs to get fixed in a broader way than just an exemption for [the Knapps,]” Tedesco said. “Because there are a lot of faithful people who operate their for-profit businesses according to their religious beliefs.”