Supreme Court rules in favor of anti-LGBTQ+ discrimination in Christian web designer case

The Supreme Court has ruled that the First Amendment means that Colorado can’t enforce its anti-discrimination law against a Christian web designer in 303 Creative LLC v. Elenis. The Court’s decision was made on a 6-3 vote, split along party lines.

“Today, the Court, for the first time in its history, grants a business open to the public a constitutional right to refuse to serve members of a protected class,” Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote in her dissent.

Related:

Hate group may have faked key argument in LGBTQ+ Supreme Court case. And they might win.

They said a couple named “Stewart and Mike” wanted a wedding website from the Christian web designer. But plot twist….

Justice Neil Gorsuch wrote the opinion for the majority and was joined by Justices Samuel Alito, Clarence Thomas, John Roberts, Amy Coney Barrett, and Neil Kavanaugh. Justice Sotomayor wrote the dissenting opinion and was joined by Justices Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson.

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“As surely as Ms. Smith seeks to engage in protected First Amendment speech, Colorado seeks to compel speech Ms.
Smith does not wish to provide,” Gorsuch wrote in the majority opinion.

“Under Colorado’s logic, the government may compel anyone who speaks for pay on a given topic to accept all commissions on that same topic—no matter the underlying message—if the topic somehow implicates a customer’s statutorily protected trait,” he continued. “Taken seriously, that principle would allow the government to force all manner of artists, speechwriters, and others whose services involve speech to speak what they do not believe on pain of penalty.”

The case was brought in 2016 by a web designer named Lori Smith, who says that Colorado’s anti-discrimination law might make her make websites for same-sex couples even though she wants to make them only for opposite-sex couples. Her complaint, which cites the Bible as well as caselaw, says that she “believes that God is calling her to promote and celebrate His design for marriage… between one man and one woman only.”

At trial, she admitted that she had taken work from a Jewish group before, which showed that she was willing to take work from clients with different religious beliefs from hers, but she said that it would be different to take work from same-sex couples because that would violate her sincerely held religious beliefs.

A district court ruled against Smith in 2019 saying that she lacked legal standing to oppose the law because the state hadn’t actually investigated her, and so she hadn’t been harmed by it – factors usually required in order for a person to claim legal standing to oppose a law.

Smith appealed to the Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals, and it also ruled against her in a 2-1 ruling, stating that anti-discrimination laws are “essential” to maintaining “democratic ideals.”

“We must also consider the grave harms caused when public accommodations discriminate on the basis of race, religion, sex, or sexual orientation,” Judge Mark Beck Briscoe wrote for the majority of a three-judge panel of the Tenth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Denver. “Combatting such discrimination is, like individual autonomy, ‘essential’ to our democratic ideals.”

Last year the Supreme Court agreed to hear her case, but only her free speech argument, not her argument about the free exercise of religion. And just this week, a key argument – that a gay man named “Stewart” asked her to make a wedding website for him and his fiance “Mike” – was shown to likely be fake since Stewart didn’t even know about Smith or her case and is straight and a web designer himself.

“Around the country, there has been a backlash to the movement for liberty and equality for gender and sexual minorities,” Sotomayor wrote in the dissenting opinion. “New forms of inclusion have been met with reactionary exclusion. This is heartbreaking. Sadly, it is also familiar. When the civil rights and women’s rights movements sought equality in public life, some public establishments refused. Some even claimed, based on sincere religious beliefs, constitutional rights to discriminate. The brave Justices who once sat on this Court decisively rejected those claims.”

“Now the Court faces a similar test. A business open to the public seeks to deny gay and lesbian customers the full and equal enjoyment of its services based on the owner’s religious belief that same-sex marriages are ‘false.’ The business argues, and a majority of the Court agrees, that because the business offers services that are customized and expressive, the Free Speech Clause of the First Amendment shields the business from a generally applicable law that prohibits discrimination in the sale of publicly available goods and services. That is wrong. Profoundly wrong.”

“Our Constitution contains no right to refuse service to a disfavored group.”

Harvard Law Cyberlaw Clinic instructor and trans rights advocate Alejandra Caraballo posted a “No Gays Allowed” sign on Twitter to express dismay at the decision.

“The Supreme Court just made this legal for ‘creative professions’ to put up on their windows in 303 Creative,” she wrote.

The Supreme Court just made this legal for "creative professions" to put up on their windows in 303 Creative. pic.twitter.com/Szygf4UcRZ

— Alejandra Caraballo (@Esqueer_) June 30, 2023

During oral arguments last year, some of the conservative justices showed contempt for the very idea of promoting equal treatment of diverse people. Gorsuch referred to diversity training as “a reeducation program,” and Alito joked about Black kids wearing KKK uniforms.