Supreme Court Rules in Favor of Christian Web Designer Who Refused To Work On Same-Sex Wedding Announcements - WSJ

Supreme Court Rules In Favor of Christian Web Designer Who Refused to Work on Same-Sex Wedding Announcements - WSJ 7/10/23,
7/10/23, 11:01 AM
Supreme Court Rules Web Designer

Can Refuse Work on Same-Sex
Wedding Announcements
6-3 decision puts First Amendment rights above state
nondiscrimination law
Jess Bravin
WASHINGTON—The Supreme Court sided with a Colorado web designer’s

claim that the First Amendment entitles her to refuse commissions for same-
sex wedding announcements, handing a defeat to gay rights and a win to
religious conservatives still smarting from the court’s 2015 ruling granting
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Supreme Court Rules In Favor of Christian Web Designer Who Refused to Work on Same-Sex Wedding Announcements - WSJ 7/10/23, 11:01 AM
marriage equality to LGBTQ couples.
Writing for the court’s six conservatives, Justice Neil Gorsuch said
Colorado’s antidiscrimination law couldn’t be enforced to require a business
owner to express ideas she opposes, even if the state considers those views
odious.
“The opportunity to think for ourselves and to express those thoughts freely
is among our most cherished liberties and part of what keeps our Republic
strong,” Gorsuch wrote, joined by Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices
Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito, Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett.
While that “means all of us will encounter ideas we consider” wrongheaded

or even offensive, he wrote, “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.”
The case involves Lorie Smith, an evangelical Christian who runs 303
Creative, a web-design company in Littleton, Colo. She filed suit in 2016 for a
federal court order declaring her business exempt from state
antidiscrimination law should any same-sex couple seek her services. A
federal appeals court in Denver, like other federal and state courts
confronting objectors to same-sex marriage, found no constitutional right
exempting her from state law requiring that businesses open to the public
treat customers equally without regard to sexual orientation.
The Supreme Court majority viewed the case as a straightforward

application of free-speech doctrines that forbid compelled speech. The
court’s three liberals, in contrast, saw the decision as a retrenchment of civil
rights that cast LGBTQ Americans as second-class citizens.
Public accommodation* discrimination laws protecting sexual
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orientation and gender
Laws specifically mention sexual orientation and gender identity
Agencies have said protections for 'sex' include sexual orientation and
gender identity
*Public accommodations generally include places outside of home, work and

school. †Wisconsin’s law specifically protects sexual orientation but not
gender identity.
“Around the country, there has been a backlash to the movement for liberty
and equality for gender and sexual minorities,” Justice Sonia Sotomayor
wrote in dissent, joined by Justices Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson.
“This is heartbreaking. Sadly, it is also familiar,” she wrote, citing the
resistance provoked by early gains of the civil rights and women’s rights
movements of earlier decades.
As she did Thursday when the court ended racial preferences in university
admissions, Sotomayor read her dissent from the bench, a gesture
conveying deep disagreement with the majority.
That concern among liberals was echoed by the White House, where
President Biden issued a statement calling for Congress to amend federal
civil-rights law to explicitly cover sexual orientation.
“I’m deeply concerned that the decision could invite more discrimination
against LGBTQI+ Americans,” Biden said. “More broadly, today’s decision
weakens longstanding laws that protect all Americans against discrimination
in public accommodations—including people of color, people with
disabilities, people of faith, and women.”
Conservatives saw the right to withhold expressive services as benefiting

Americans of various stripes.
“The state of Colorado wanted to compel the speech of Christian artists and
business owners who declined to use their God-given talents to celebrate
views that run contrary to what their faith teaches,” said Sen. Ted Cruz (R.,
Texas). “Should a Muslim artist be compelled by the government to draw the
image of Muhammed? Should Jewish artists be forced to create art that is
antisemitic?” he added.
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The Supreme Court’s liberals saw the recent decision as a retrenchment of civil rights that cast LGBTQ Americans
as second-class citizens. Photo: Eric Thayer/Bloomberg News
In her appeal to the Supreme Court, Smith was represented by Alliance

Defending Freedom, a conservative Christian advocacy group that also
argued against same-sex marriage in the 2015 Obergefell v. Hodges
decision.
Kristen Waggoner, the Alliance attorney who argued the case, said Friday
that “disagreement isn’t discrimination, and the government can’t mislabel
speech as discrimination to censor it.” The state “should no more censor
Lorie for speaking consistent with her beliefs about marriage than it should
punish an LGBT graphic designer for declining to criticize same-sex
marriage,” she said.
Colorado Attorney General Phil Weiser saw broader implications. “Today’s

sweeping decision threatens to destabilize our public marketplace and
encourage all kinds of businesses—not just those serving weddings—to
claim a First Amendment free speech right to refuse service to certain
customers” whose actions or identities they oppose, Weiser, a Democrat,
said. He listed interracial couples, women-owned businesses and members
of religious groups who could face discrimination going forward.
The case involved a long-brewing contest between two lines of recent

Supreme Court decisions: those that give priority to religious expression
rights over secular public interests and those extending civil equality to
LGBTQ Americans.
Several cases posing that conflict have reached the court since the
Obergefell decision, but at each juncture the justices either have turned
down the appeal seeking exemption from nondiscrimination law, or issued a
relatively narrow decision in favor of the objector to same-sex marriage
without issuing a broader pronouncement on whose rights must yield.
Gorsuch grounded his opinion in one of the court’s landmark free-speech

decisions, West Virginia State Board of Education v. Barnette, when at the
height of World War II the justices reversed precedent to hold that under the
Constitution, government can’t compel students to salute the flag.
More recently, he observed, the court ruled in 1995 that organizers of

Boston’s St. Patrick’s Day Parade could exclude an LGBTQ group from
marching, and in 2000 that the Boy Scouts of America could dismiss a
scoutmaster for being gay. In both cases, the court found that First
Amendment rights of speech and association superseded state
antidiscrimination laws.
Such laws, Friday’s opinion noted, “have done much to secure the civil rights
of all Americans.” But Gorsuch wrote that in this case Colorado “seeks to use
its law to compel an individual to create speech she does not believe.”
Smith’s business is selling creative services, which necessarily intertwine her

personal expression with the message her clients commission her to create,
the court found.
Sotomayor argued that the issue wasn’t Smith’s expression—she remains

free to state her opposition to same-sex marriage—but her conduct as a
business owner. “The only thing the business may not do is deny whatever
websites it offers on the basis of sexual orientation,” she wrote.
Both sides agreed that future litigation will follow, with courts asked to
decide when the products or services a business offers—photography,
stationery, confectionery were all potential examples—qualify as protected
speech.
The justices kick-started that process Friday, directing an Oregon court to

reconsider in light of the Gorsuch opinion its 2022 decision that a Gresham,
Ore., bakery violated state antidiscrimination law by refusing to bake a cake
for a lesbian wedding.
Write to Jess Bravin at Jess.Bravin@wsj.com

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Supreme Court Rules In Favor of Christian Web Designer Who Refused to Work on Same-Sex Wedding Announcements - WSJ 7/10/23,

Supreme Court Rules Web Designer

WASHINGTON—The Supreme Court sided with a Colorado web designer’s

marriage equality to LGBTQ couples.

While that “means all of us will encounter ideas we consider” wrongheaded

The Supreme Court majority viewed the case as a straightforward

Public accommodation* discrimination laws protecting sexual

orientation and gender

Laws specifically mention sexual orientation and gender identity

*Public accommodations generally include places outside of home, work and

Conservatives saw the right to withhold expressive services as benefiting

Advertisement - Scroll to Continue

as second-class citizens. Photo: Eric Thayer/Bloomberg News

In her appeal to the Supreme Court, Smith was represented by Alliance

Colorado Attorney General Phil Weiser saw broader implications. “Today’s

The case involved a long-brewing contest between two lines of recent

Gorsuch grounded his opinion in one of the court’s landmark free-speech

More recently, he observed, the court ruled in 1995 that organizers of

Smith’s business is selling creative services, which necessarily intertwine her

Sotomayor argued that the issue wasn’t Smith’s expression—she remains

The justices kick-started that process Friday, directing an Oregon court to

Write to Jess Bravin at Jess.Bravin@wsj.com

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