Case: Youth 71Five Ministries v. Charlene Williams, et al., No. 25-776
Lower Court: Ninth Circuit
Docketed: January 2, 2026
Status: Pending
Question Presented: Whether a religious organization can raise the First Amendment right to religious autonomy as an affirmative claim challenging government action, and whether conditioning public grant access on waiving religious employment rights violates the First Amendment.
Youth 71Five Ministries has filed a cert petition asking the Court to decide whether Oregon violated the First Amendment by stripping the Christian youth ministry of previously awarded grant funding after the state adopted a new nondiscrimination rule requiring grantees to certify they do not discriminate in employment on the basis of religion. The petition, filed by John J. Bursch of Alliance Defending Freedom, draws support from six amicus briefs—including filings from a coalition of states led by Montana, the Christian Legal Society, and the Jewish Coalition for Religious Liberty—all filed in mid-February 2026.
71Five is a nonprofit Christian ministry that has served at-risk youth in southern Oregon since 2017 through youth centers, apprenticeship programs, camps, and mentoring. The ministry requires all employees and volunteers to sign a Christian statement of faith. Oregon’s Youth Development Division had funded 71Five through its Youth Community Investment Grants program, but for the 2023–2025 cycle the Division added a new eligibility rule requiring grantees to certify that they do not discriminate in employment based on religion. The Division withdrew 71Five’s conditional grant award and barred it from future funding. Respondents are represented by Paul L. Smith of the Oregon Department of Justice.
The Ninth Circuit, in an August 2025 opinion by Judge Johnstone, largely sided with the state, holding that the nondiscrimination rule was neutral and generally applicable and thus satisfied rational-basis review under Employment Division v. Smith. The panel also rejected 71Five’s novel claim that the First Amendment’s protections for religious autonomy—rooted in the ministerial exception and ecclesiastical abstention doctrines—can be asserted as affirmative claims against executive action, rather than solely as defenses to litigation. But the panel partially reversed on expressive-association grounds, finding that Oregon could not extend the rule to restrict 71Five’s hiring for initiatives that receive no state funding—an unconstitutional-conditions problem under Boy Scouts of America v. Dale. The en banc court declined rehearing in November 2025.
The petition squarely tees up the Court’s continued reexamination of the intersection between religious organizational autonomy and government benefit programs. The claim that religious autonomy principles can be wielded offensively—not just defensively—would extend the doctrinal trajectory established in Catholic Charities Bureau v. Wisconsin (2025), where a unanimous Court struck down a state’s attempt to define a Catholic organization’s religious character. The case also implicates the framework of Fulton v. City of Philadelphia (2021), which held that a government entity violated free exercise by conditioning a foster care contract on abandoning religious criteria. Here, 71Five argues that Oregon’s grant condition presents the same constitutional problem on an even broader scale. The case arrives as the Court considers other First Amendment challenges to state regulatory authority this term in Chiles v. Salazar, also brought by Alliance Defending Freedom.
The case had initially been distributed for conference, but after respondents waived their right to respond, the Court requested a response on January 16, 2026. Oregon has been granted an extension to file its brief in opposition by March 19, 2026. The case will not be conferenced until after that briefing is complete.