The Supreme Court today ruled in favor of a Christian web designer in Colorado who refuses to create websites to celebrate same-sex weddings out of religious objections.
The 6-3 decision was penned by Justice Neil Gorsuch and joined by Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Samuel Alito, Amy Coney Barrett, Brett Kavanaugh and Clarence Thomas. Justice Sonia Sotomayor penned a dissent joined by her liberal colleagues Justices Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson.
The decision is the latest victory for religious conservatives at the high court and will alarm critics who fear the current court is setting its sights on overturning a 2015 decision that cleared the way for same-sex marriage nationwide.
Gorsuch wrote that,
the First Amendment envisions the United States as a rich and complex place where all persons are free to think and speak as they wish, not as the government demands.
All manner of speech – from ‘pictures, films, paintings, drawings, and engravings,’ to ‘oral utterance and the printed word’ – qualify for the First Amendment’s protections; no less can hold true when it comes to speech like Ms. Smith’s conveyed over the Internet.”
In dissent, Sotomayor said,
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.
Specifically, the Court holds that the First Amendment exempts a website design company from a state law that prohibits the company from denying wedding websites to same-sex couples if the company chooses to sell those websites to the public.”
Robert Reich was quick to post a response on Twitter…
The SCOTUS ruling to allow discrimination against same-sex couples is part of the right's all-out war on the rights of LGBTQ+ Americans.
— Robert Reich (@RBReich) June 30, 2023
The systematic targeting of an already marginalized group is classic a fascist tactic and a threat to all our rights. pic.twitter.com/llFZVcEKr7
According to The Guardian, the suit that centers on Lorie Smith, a website designer in Colorado who did not want to provide her services for gay weddings. She said a gay man named Stewart requested her services for help with his upcoming wedding.
The email she produced read,
We are getting married early next year and would love some design work done for our invites, placenames etc. We might also stretch to a website.”
In court filings, her lawyers produced a copy of the inquiry. But Stewart said in an interview that he never sent the message, even though it correctly lists his email address and telephone number.
He has also been happily married to a woman for the last 15 years.
I can confirm I did not contact 303 Creative about a website. It’s fraudulent insomuch as someone is pretending to be me and looking to marry someone called Mike.
That’s not me.
What’s most concerning to me is that this is kind of like the one main piece of evidence that’s been part of this case for the last six-plus years and it’s false. Nobody’s checked it. Anybody can pick up the phone, write an email, send a text, to verify whether that was correct information.
False evidence in a Supreme Court case that just created a major ruling AGAINST an entire group of Americans..?
If true, this is huge. Falsifying documents in a case before the Supreme Court that has the potential to erode critical civil rights risks using the Court as an instrument of that deception. https://t.co/EkIyAk0rEH
— Janai Nelson (@JNelsonLDF) June 29, 2023
(Photo, YouTube; via CNN)
