Louisville agrees to pay $800,000 in attorney fees after wedding photographer’s First Amendment lawsuit

Settlement closes a long-running challenge to Louisville’s public-accommodations rules

Louisville Metro Government has agreed to pay $800,000 to resolve a federal case brought by a wedding photographer who argued that the city’s anti-discrimination law could not be applied to compel her to create expressive work celebrating same-sex weddings. The payment is tied to attorney fees and ends the city’s remaining exposure in a dispute that began in 2019.

The case centered on Louisville’s “Fairness Ordinance,” a local civil-rights measure that bars discrimination in places of public accommodation on several grounds, including sexual orientation and gender identity. The photographer said she served LGBTQ clients generally but would not photograph weddings that conflict with her religious beliefs about marriage. She also challenged a separate provision that restricts public statements indicating an intent to deny services based on protected characteristics.

How the case developed

The lawsuit was filed before the photographer had been the subject of a city enforcement action. She argued that the ordinance nonetheless chilled her speech and forced her to choose between operating her business in line with her beliefs and risking legal penalties. Louisville disputed that the plaintiff had standing to sue and defended the ordinance as a neutral law regulating commercial conduct to ensure equal access to goods and services.

In August 2022, the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Kentucky issued a decision concluding that, as applied to the plaintiff’s wedding photography and related written expression, the ordinance likely violated the First Amendment’s free-speech protections and Kentucky’s Religious Freedom Restoration Act. The court entered injunctive relief preventing the city from enforcing the challenged provisions against her in that context. The case then moved into appellate litigation, with arguments later heard in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit.

Why national precedent mattered

The dispute unfolded alongside a series of high-profile cases testing the boundary between anti-discrimination enforcement and compelled speech claims involving creative professionals. In 2023, the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in 303 Creative LLC v. Elenis sharpened the constitutional framework by holding that the government may not force a speaker to create expressive content conveying messages the speaker does not endorse, even when the regulation is styled as a public-accommodations requirement.

Those developments became central to how courts evaluated Louisville’s defenses and the durability of the injunction already in place.

What the resolution does—and does not—change

• The $800,000 payment addresses attorney fees and ends the city’s litigation costs in this matter.

• The resolution applies to the plaintiff and the specific application of the ordinance at issue; it does not repeal Louisville’s Fairness Ordinance.

• The broader policy debate—how cities can enforce LGBTQ civil-rights protections while complying with constitutional limits on compelled speech—remains active and fact-dependent, especially for creative services.

At the core of the case was whether requiring a photographer to produce wedding imagery and related messaging constitutes regulation of conduct or compelled expression.

For Louisville, the settlement closes a case with financial consequences and continued legal significance, as other jurisdictions watch how courts apply compelled-speech doctrine to public-accommodations enforcement involving expressive businesses.