The lawsuit, filed against Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel in the case Right to Life of Michigan v. Nessel, challenged an amendment to the state's Elliott-Larsen Civil Rights Act. Lawmakers had redefined "sex" discrimination under the act to include "the termination of a pregnancy," a change that made it illegal, under threat of penalty, for pro-life nonprofits to decline to hire job applicants who support abortion or to exclude abortion coverage from employee health plans.
With the injunction now in place while the case proceeds, Right to Life of Michigan and the Pregnancy Resource Center may continue recruiting and hiring staff who share their pro-life convictions and agree to live consistently with them on the job, without facing state enforcement action. The court also denied Michigan's motion to dismiss the suit, meaning the underlying constitutional questions will move forward toward a fuller hearing.
Alliance Defending Freedom attorneys argued the law amounted to compelling pro-life ministries to underwrite and staff themselves with people committed to undermining the very cause they exist to serve. Right to Life of Michigan has operated in the state for decades, and the Pregnancy Resource Center offers material and counseling support to women facing crisis pregnancies. Both organizations maintained that hiring decisions rooted in mission and conviction are not discrimination but the ordinary right of any group organized around a belief.
No Man Can Serve Two Masters
Now step back from the docket number and the statute's fine print, and look at what the state actually attempted here. It tried to reach into the hiring room of a ministry and say: you must bring in among you those who despise what you stand for. My friend, there is an old and stubborn law written into creation itself, older than Michigan's legislature, older than any court — a house divided against itself cannot stand. You cannot build an army out of men who hate the general. You cannot run a rescue mission with lifeguards who resent the drowning.
This is not merely a labor dispute. It touches something sacred — the liberty of a people to organize their lives, their work, and their worship around what God has told them is true. Scripture never pretends that believer and unbeliever can be yoked to the same plow without one of them dragging the other off course.
"Be ye not unequally yoked together with unbelievers: for what fellowship hath righteousness with unrighteousness? and what communion hath light with darkness?" (2 Corinthians 6:14)
That verse was not written about employment law. It was written about the soul. But the principle runs straight through both. A ministry built to protect the unborn cannot be made, by force of statute, to hand its own keys to those who would open the door to the very harm it was built to prevent. That is not tolerance. That is dissolution dressed up as fairness.
What ought to comfort the believer here is not merely that a court ruled correctly on a Friday in July. It is the deeper reminder that no government, however determined, holds final authority over conscience. Caesar can tax, Caesar can regulate, Caesar can even, for a season, pass an unjust law. But Caesar cannot compel a redeemed heart to call evil good, nor force a servant of Christ to open his house to what he was sent to resist.
Joshua stood before the tribes of Israel long before there was a Congress or a courthouse and drew the line plainly:
"Choose you this day whom ye will serve... but as for me and my house, we will serve the LORD." (Joshua 24:15)
Every believer, every ministry, every pregnancy center with its doors propped open for a frightened young mother, is standing in that same choosing. The world will always find new language for old pressure — equity, inclusion, fairness — but underneath it is the same ancient demand: bow, or be broken. Stand fast, my friend. The God who numbered the sparrows and knit the child in the womb has not lost track of the courtroom, nor of you.