Federal Appeals Court Sides With Religious Ministry That Withdrew Job Offer To Lesbian In A Same-Sex Marriage
When World Vision learned that Aubry McMahon had a wife, the job offer was rescinded on the grounds that the customer service rep job was actually the job of a minister.
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On Tuesday, a San Francisco appeals court gave a green light to a religious ministry in Washington state to rescind a job offer to a woman after learning that she had a wife. The customer service rep role, which paid $13 to $15 an hour at the time of hire, did not involve religious activity per se. But the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco ruled that Aubry McMahon would be “responsible for effectively communicating World Vision’s involvement in ministries and projects around the world.”
In making this ruling, the court essentially determined that McMahon would be a minister—that her work would be “vital” to the group’s religious mission. Judge Richard Tallman said, for instance, that engaging a donor might involve joining them in prayer which would be a form of ministry.
The 3-0 ruling cited the Supreme Court Hosanna-Tabor case in 2012 which gave latitude to religious organizations to classify non-clergy employees as “ministers”, thereby allowing them to fire people on the basis of sexual orientation, race and other categories which would normally be protected by anti-discrimination laws.
Judge Tallman’s ruling overturned a prior determination made by U.S. District Judge James Robart of Seattle who had ruled that World Vision had unjustly discriminated against McMahon. While considering whether a customer rep might engage in prayer, he ultimately determined duties to be mostly secular—administrative, not ministerial—such as data entry and answering calls.
World Vision has emphasized that they hold employees to standards of conduct, including the Biblical standard of “a faithful marriage between a man and woman.” The organization’s attorney, Daniel Blomber, told the court that the ministry aimed to ensure “that those who speak on its behalf faithfully reflect the view of marriage that Christianity has taught for millennia.” Reportedly, in a phone interview, McMahon was asked if she would comply with the org’s standards of contact, and stated, “I’m aligned, yes!”
Upon receiving the job offer in January 2021, she told World Vision that she and her wife were expecting a baby in March, and asked if she might have some time off after the birth. Three days later, the job offer was taken back.
In October 2024, ACLU of Washington filed an amicus brief to support McMahon and future stakeholders who might face similar prejudice. Their perspective captured what was at stake then, and the concern was not misguided: “Should the Ninth Circuit accept the organization’s First Amendment defense—that religious organizations can discriminate on any basis so long as it is grounded in their religious belief—it would gut employment protections for LGBTQ individuals and pave the way for religious organizations to discriminate on the basis of not only sex, sexual orientation, and gender identity but also other protected characteristics like race, color, and national origin.”
