The Supreme Court sided with a Colorado-based website designer on Friday who does not want to build wedding announcement websites for same-sex couples, holding that the state’s anti-discrimination law would affect her business and violate her First Amendment rights.
Justice Neil Gorsuch authored the 6-3 majority opinion in 303 Creative v. Elenis, holding, “The First Amendment prohibits Colorado from forcing the website designer to create expressive designs speaking messages with which the designer disagrees.”
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“Colorado seeks to force an individual to speak in ways that align with its views but defy her conscience about a matter of major significance,” Gorsuch added.
Gorsuch’s majority opinion was joined by the court’s Republican-appointed justices, while liberal Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan, and Ketanji Brown Jackson dissented.
“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,” Sotomayor wrote in her dissent.
The lawsuit against Colorado’s anti-discrimination law was brought by a religious business owner who sees herself as an artist and does not want to use her creative talents to express a message against her Christian beliefs.
Plaintiff Lorie Smith argued the state’s public accommodations law bars her from doing what she wants to do more than anything else — create custom websites for heterosexual couples.
“Under Colorado’s logic,” Gorsuch wrote, “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 … 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.”
Smith celebrated the decisions through tears during a remote press conference on Friday, saying she had been subject to “harassment, constant hacking attempts, and even death threats.”
“I’m so very grateful to the United States Supreme Court who affirmed today that Colorado can’t force me or anyone to say something we don’t believe. This is a victory for all Americans across our great country, whether you share my beliefs or hold different beliefs,” Smith said.
President Joe Biden lamented the decision in a statement on Friday, saying “painfully it comes during Pride month when millions of Americans across the country join together to celebrate the contributions, resilience, and strength of the LGBTQI+ community.”
“That is why we must pass the Equality Act, which will enshrine civil rights protections for LGBTQI+ Americans in federal law and strengthen public accommodations protections for all Americans,” Biden said, urging Congress to send the legislation to his desk.
During December’s oral arguments, Smith’s counsel argued that her Christian faith prevents her from doing work for same-sex marriages and claimed her business has been stifled from getting off the ground over the concern that she may face litigation if she denies services to same-sex clients.
But Biden administration attorney Brian Fletcher stressed that a ruling in favor of Smith would allow someone like a photographer to refuse to take headshots of a woman based on sexist stereotypes against her.
Sotomayor stressed in arguments that the effect of a ruling favoring Smith could allow for discrimination against interracial or disabled couples seeking to marry. “Where’s the line?” she asked at the time.
The case has gained attention for its similarities to a 2018 case, Masterpiece Cakeshop v. Colorado Civil Rights Commission, in which the court ruled that a Colorado baker had the right to refuse to make a wedding cake for a same-sex couple.
However, the decision in the 2018 case did not broadly affect Colorado’s anti-discrimination law or establish when a business is entitled to an exemption under the First Amendment’s protections from compelled speech.
Smith, who was represented by the Alliance Defending Freedom, contended that her business could be subject to fines if a same-sex client ever requests a service from her, arguing that being forced to create such a website would constitute a form of compelled speech that the Constitution serves to prevent.
“The U.S. Supreme Court rightly reaffirmed that the government can’t force Americans to say things they don’t believe,” ADF president and general counsel Kristen Waggoner said Friday. “The court reiterated that it’s unconstitutional for the state to eliminate from the public square ideas it dislikes, including the belief that marriage is the union of husband and wife.”
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Meanwhile, the group Americans United for Separation of Church and State rebuked the 6-3 decision, saying “Christian Nationalists and their judicial allies” are attempting to “drag this country back.”
“In America, everyone should have equal access to goods and services, regardless of who they love, who they are, how they worship, or what they look like,” the group’s CEO, Rachel Laser, said.
