The full bench of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit has agreed to rehear a case that could significantly affect whether religious ministries across the country may limit their hiring to employees who share their faith — a question with far-reaching implications for Catholic institutions, evangelical nonprofits, and other faith-based organizations.

At the center of the dispute is the Yakima Union Gospel Mission, a Christian shelter and social services organization in Washington State, which challenged a provision of the Washington Law Against Discrimination (WLAD). That statute bars employment discrimination on multiple grounds, including sexual orientation, and while it contains a religious exemption, the exemption does not extend to non-ministerial employees — meaning staff in roles such as information technology, administration, or facilities management may not be subject to faith-based hiring criteria under the law’s current interpretation.

The mission argued that restricting its ability to hire co-religionists, even in non-ministerial positions, unconstitutionally interferes with its religious identity and mission. Both the federal district court and an initial three-judge appellate panel agreed, ruling in the ministry’s favor. Washington State then appealed, and the full Ninth Circuit agreed to take up the matter through en banc review — a process that vacated the three-judge panel’s earlier ruling.

The Dissent and What It Argues

U.S. Circuit Judge Patrick Bumatay, who wrote the original three-judge panel opinion favoring the mission, filed a dissent from the full court’s decision to rehear the case. Judges Lawrence VanDyke and Eric Tung, all three appointed by President Donald Trump, joined that dissent.

In his dissent, Bumatay warned that forcing religious institutions to hire those who openly reject their beliefs strikes at the organizational coherence that makes such ministries possible. “But if state law were to prevent religious institutions from employing only co-religionists, those institutions could be forced to hire employees who openly flout and disagree with their religious principles,” he wrote.

He went further, arguing that the full court’s willingness to revisit a decision protecting religious employers signals a troubling judicial posture: “The Ninth Circuit has relegated religious liberty to a second-class right.”

A Question With Deep Catholic Resonance

The case raises questions that cut directly to the heart of how Catholic social teaching understands religious institutions. The Church has long held that faith communities are not simply service-delivery organizations that happen to have a religious logo; they are expressions of a believing community whose internal coherence depends on shared conviction.

The Catechism of the Catholic Church affirms the right of the faithful to form associations ordered to apostolic ends, and the Second Vatican Council’s declaration Dignitatis Humanae teaches that religious communities have the right to govern themselves according to their own norms and to select, train, appoint, and sustain their own ministers. While an IT professional at a Catholic shelter is not a minister in the canonical sense, Catholic institutions have consistently maintained that their entire workforce participates in a shared mission that cannot be severed from belief.

The U.S. bishops and Catholic legal advocates have repeatedly argued before courts and legislatures that compelling faith-based employers to hire individuals whose public conduct or stated commitments contradict the organization’s religious mission effectively forces those institutions to choose between their identity and their public presence — a coercion the First Amendment was designed to prevent.

What Comes Next

The en banc Ninth Circuit will now hear arguments from both sides. A ruling against the mission could place every faith-based nonprofit operating in the Ninth Circuit’s jurisdiction — which spans nine Western states — in a difficult legal position. Conversely, a ruling in favor of the mission could strengthen protections for religious hiring across one of the most populous regions of the country.

Legal observers note that regardless of how the full Ninth Circuit rules, the losing side is likely to seek Supreme Court review. The high court has shown increasing attentiveness to religious liberty claims in recent years, and a circuit-level decision touching on the intersection of anti-discrimination law and the constitutional rights of religious organizations would present a compelling vehicle for further review.

The case is being closely watched by religious liberty advocates, civil rights organizations, and faith-based institutions nationwide.