The Washington State Court of Appeals has issued a consequential ruling rejecting former Together Church Pastor Micahn Carter’s defamation suit against a former assistant who claimed he raped her.
Micahn Carter / Video screenshot @Revere Church
In January 2024, Carter sued his former assistant, Mary Jones, after she sent a letter to Church of the Highlands (COTH) Pastor Chris Hodges and published a post on Medium detailing the sexual assault.
Carter has admitted to a “sexual encounter” with his former Together Church assistant, but claimed it was consensual. He first filed suit against Jones in Alabama, seeking at least $500,000 in damages. That case was dismissed with prejudice on jurisdictional grounds, since the alleged assault occurred in Washington.
After Carter refiled in Washington, Jones moved to dismiss the case under the Uniform Public Expression Protection Act, but Yakima County Superior Court Judge Kevin Naugh denied her request in February 2024. Judge Naugh said the dispute over a pastor’s alleged sexual relationship with a church employee was a matter of public concern, but ruled that a jury would have to decide whether the encounter was consensual. He also found that Jones’s statements were not protected by any legal privilege and declined to classify Carter as a public figure.
Jones then appealed the case to the Court of Appeals.
On December 30, in a published opinion spanning more than 100 pages, a three-judge panel of the Division III Court of Appeals said that Judge Naugh had erred in refusing Jones’ request for an early dismissal, finding that Carter’s defamation suit functioned as an effort to silence her speech on a matter of public concern.
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Carter and his wife, April, led Together Church in Yakima, Washington, for 13 years. In July 2019, he abruptly resigned from the church. He told those in the congregation that he was stepping down because of an “inappropriate incident” and that he had recently been diagnosed with bipolar disorder. Carter then checked himself into a treatment center.
Following his resignation, he and his family moved to Birmingham, Alabama, to join the staff at COTH, which is part of the Association of Related Churches (ARC). According to court documents, Carter joined the church through a “ministerial restoration” program, which prohibited him from participating in public ministry for a year. He began preaching at the church again in 2020.
During his time at COTH in rehabilitation, Jones sent a letter to COTH Pastor Chris Hodges, accusing Carter of raping her in her Together Church office on April 29, 2019. She also published her allegations in a post on Medium titled “Moving Forward.” Carter resigned from COTH due to the claims. Hodges announced a couple of days later that, in light of “new allegations,” the Carters had resigned from the church, which was no longer involved in his rehabilitation.
In dismissing his claims, the Washington State Court of Appeals drew a sharp line around what the law will, and will not, treat as actionable defamation. The judges held that the “common-interest privilege,” a doctrine that protects communications shared with someone who has a legitimate reason to receive them, shielded the letter to the Alabama pastor. On page 43 of the opinion, the court wrote, “Any church would want to know whether a married pastor engaged in sexual intercourse with his assistant on church property.”
The court also ruled that, given the detailed context Jones included in her Medium post, her allegation of rape amounted to a non-actionable opinion rather than a provably false statement of fact. It also found that Carter qualified as a “limited public figure,” a designation that raised his burden to show she spoke with actual malice: knowing falsity or reckless disregard for the truth.
The judges concluded he could not.
In language that tracked a broader cultural understanding of workplace dynamics, the court noted that victims of workplace sexual harassment may initially blame themselves, only later recognizing the role of power imbalance (and the absence of meaningful consent) in an employer-employee relationship. The judges also made clear that Jones did not need to prove that her account met Washington’s criminal definition of rape to protect her statements in this civil context.
In early December, Carter and April announced plans to start a new church in Indianapolis, Indiana. The couple revealed their plans in an Instagram post on December 5 and expect to launch the church in the fall of 2026.
The announcement comes more than a year after Carter returned to public ministry.
Theo Lesczynski, an attorney who argued at the appellate court for Jones, praised her courage in speaking out, called the court’s decision “groundbreaking,” and said it will protect survivors.
“The opinion advances the law of defamation to ensure that survivors can speak freely about their experiences and bring public attention to these extraordinarily important issues,” he added.
The panel directed that Carter reimburse Jones for her attorney’s fees and costs, both at the trial-court level and on appeal.
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