An Indiana school district just wrote a $650,000 check to settle a religious discrimination lawsuit it never should have started.
Now the same legal team that cashed that check just walked into a Louisiana courthouse.
And another government institution was caught putting its discrimination against Christians in writing.
Baton Rouge Library Fired a Pastor Over Its Pronoun Policy and Skipped the Legal Process
Luke Ash is the lead pastor of Stevendale Baptist Church in Baton Rouge, Louisiana.
He also worked a second job as a library technician at the East Baton Rouge Parish Library from March to July 2025.
In July 2025, a coworker asked Ash whether he would use male pronouns to refer to a biologically female trainee.
Ash said no.
His Christian faith teaches that biological sex is immutable, and calling a biological female a man would mean speaking something he believes is a lie.
He offered to address the coworker by name instead of pronouns – a solution that cost the library nothing.
Supervisors told Ash he was being let go because his religious beliefs regarding pronoun use were unacceptable under the library's "Inclusivity Policy."
Library Director Katrina Stokes, Mayor-President Sid Edwards, Mayor-Pro Tempore Brandon Noel, and Library Board President Candace Temple never engaged in the accommodation process that federal law requires before any termination.
Without exploring a single workaround, they fired a pastor for refusing to lie.
Why the Supreme Court's Groff v. DeJoy Ruling Makes This a Losing Case for the Library
Liberty Counsel filed a federal lawsuit in the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Louisiana.
The claims cover Title VII of the Civil Rights Act, the First Amendment, the Fourteenth Amendment, and Louisiana's Preservation of Religious Freedom Act.
The legal argument centers on a Supreme Court ruling left-wing employers have been ignoring since 2023.
That year, SCOTUS issued a unanimous decision in Groff v. DeJoy that shredded the old employer loophole.
For 46 years, employers had been able to deny religious accommodations by showing any cost greater than trivial – a standard so low it essentially erased the law's protection.
Groff changed that.
Now an employer must show that granting a religious accommodation would cause substantial increased costs to the business.
Letting a pastor use first names instead of pronouns costs a library nothing, and Liberty Counsel Chairman Mat Staver is not letting the East Baton Rouge Parish Library pretend otherwise.
"Public employers cannot force employees to choose between their faith and their livelihood," Staver said.
"The Constitution and Title VII require government employers to respect religious liberty, not punish it."
Liberty Counsel's Associate Vice President of Legal Affairs Daniel Schmid noted the irony.
"Where was the inclusion and welcoming of diverse views when you happen to be a Christian?" Schmid asked.
"What we see so often with these 'inclusivity' policies is they're inclusive of everyone but religious."
Title VII Religious Discrimination Lawsuits Over Preferred Pronouns Are Piling Up
The Baton Rouge library is not the first government employer to take this gamble and lose.
In March 2026, Indiana's Brownsburg School District paid former music teacher John Kluge $650,000 rather than face a jury.
Brownsburg had given Kluge a religious accommodation allowing him to call all students by last name, then revoked it after pushback and forced him out.
The Seventh Circuit sent the case to trial under Groff v. DeJoy, and Brownsburg wrote the check rather than find out what a jury would do.
A Utah Bath and Body Works store manager named Jocelyn Boden reached a favorable settlement after being fired for the same refusal.
Liberty Counsel has several more active cases working through federal courts right now.
Ash is asking the court to strike down the library's pronoun policy entirely, reinstate him with full back pay, and hit the library with compensatory and punitive damages.
The library board met, heard from pastors and religious leaders who showed up to defend Ash, and took no action.
A taxpayer-funded public institution tried to force a minister to mouth an ideological claim that contradicts his Christian faith.
Groff v. DeJoy says that is illegal – and Brownsburg School District's $650,000 settlement says the courts are now enforcing it.
Luke Ash walked into that library every day as a pastor first and a library technician second.
He chose his conscience over his paycheck.
The East Baton Rouge Parish Library is about to find out what that choice costs them.
Sources:
- Paris Apodaca, "Where Was The Inclusion? Pastor Fired For Not Using Preferred Pronouns Claims Religious Discrimination," Daily Caller News Foundation, July 12, 2026.
- "Louisiana Pastor Sues Library Over Pronoun Policy Firing," The Center Square, July 10, 2026.
- "Indiana School District Pays Former Teacher $650,000 in Religious Discrimination Case," Liberty Counsel, March 5, 2026.
- Benjamin Gill, "Former Indiana Teacher Wins $650,000 in Religious Discrimination Case Over Pronouns," CBN News, March 18, 2026.
- "Employee Fired for Faith Reaches Favorable Settlement With Bath and Body Works," First Liberty Institute, March 17, 2026.
