Becket backs Christian ministry’s freedom to hire the faithful Friend-of-the-court brief asks full Ninth Circuit to stop Washington state from policing religious employment

WASHINGTON – Becket urged the full U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit yesterday to stop Washington state from threatening to punish a Christian ministry for requiring all its employees to share and live by its faith. In a friend-of-the-court brief filed on behalf of the Aleph Institute in Union Gospel Mission of Yakima v. Brown, Becket warns that allowing government officials to police religious hiring would threaten not just the Mission, but all faith communities—especially religious minorities.

“A Jewish school shouldn’t be forced to hire an antisemitic janitor, and a Christian charity shouldn’t have to hire someone who mocks the cross,” said Rebekah Ricketts, senior counsel at Becket. “That’s just common sense. We’re confident the full Ninth Circuit will recognize that religious groups must be free to hire people who will support—not sabotage—their mission.”

Union Gospel Mission of Yakima has put its Christian faith into action for nearly a century by serving people facing homelessness, hunger, addiction, and illness across central Washington. To carry out that essential work, the Mission employs only people who share its Christian beliefs and agree to uphold them. Its employees form a community of shared faith that strengthens the Mission’s service and helps it carry a united Christian message to the people it serves.

For more than 70 years, Washington law protected the right of religious nonprofits like Union Gospel Mission to hire only employees who share their faith and agree to uphold it. But in 2021, the Washington Supreme Court limited that protection to ministers, allowing the state to punish the Mission for applying its religious standards to employees it does not consider ministers. Washington’s actions threaten not just the Mission, but all faith communities.

“Washington should stay in its lane,” said Ricketts. “Religious freedom is a dead letter if government officials can dictate who carries out a religious ministry’s mission. Those decisions belong to religious groups alone, not government bureaucrats.”

Becket’s brief on behalf of the Aleph Institute—a national Jewish organization rooted in the Orthodox Jewish, Hasidic tradition of Chabad Lubavitch that serves people isolated from their communities—explains that religious organizations, not courts or government officials, must remain free to decide what religious commitments their employees must share. Limiting that freedom to ministers is especially dangerous to minority faiths and would draw judges into religious decisions the First Amendment leaves to religious communities.

A hearing in the case is expected later this year. 

For more information or to arrange an interview, contact Ryan Colby at [email protected] or 202-349-7219.