Real estate had been Hadassah Carter’s “ministry” for years. A well-known agent in Virginia’s Chesterfield County, Carter reassured potential clients that their interests would take priority. “God comes first and equal to him, my clients come first,” her website’s personal statement read, closing with the phrase “In God We Trust” alongside a Bible verse, John 3:16.
But according to the Virginia Real Estate Board, Carter’s religious beliefs have no place in her professional life. In 2017, regulators told Carter she needed to remove the religious statements from her website and email signature, which read, “For Faith and Freedom, Jesus Loves You, and with God All things are possible …” Such comments were “associated with Christianity” and thus indicate a “preference or limitation based on religion, in violation of the Virginia Fair Housing Law,” according to the News Virginian.
Now, Carter is filing suit in the Richmond Circuit Court, arguing the board’s restrictions posed an impossible choice: Keep quiet about your beliefs or quit your job. Carter chose the latter.
“No one should have to justify their free speech or their religion to a regulatory body,” Carter’s attorney, Jordan Sekulow, said in a statement. “To threaten someone’s job because they express their faith makes free speech unfree.”
Among the many conflicts our society faces, the tension between religious expression and legal jurisdiction is perhaps the most prevalent. Carter’s choice is one that religious Americans across the country have had to face, whether it’s in a Colorado cake shop, a Washington flower store, or a Virginia real estate office. This question has been litigated — Colorado baker Jack Phillips won his case before the Supreme Court last year — but there is still a lot of gray area the courts have not yet touched. Until they do, people of faith tread carefully. How much religion is too much? Should it be allowed in the workplace? One misstep and you might find yourself out of a job.
Depending on the outcome of Carter’s case, the Virginia Real Estate Board’s restrictions could spell bad news for religious persons charged with living out their faith. You can do so, the board says, but only in these designated ways.
The board’s decision drips with irony: Carter’s good-natured attempt to spread well-wishes earned her accusations of discrimination. And even better: The Bible verse the board nitpicked as evidence of “illegal preference” declares God shows no partiality: “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son…” This might be true, but only outside the workplace.
