US Supreme Court backs Christian web designer with anti-gay marriage stance

[1/3]Web designer Lorie Smith, plaintiff in a Supreme Court case who objects to same-sex marriage, poses for a portrait at her office in Littleton, Colorado, U.S., November 28, 2022. REUTERS/Kevin Mohatt/

June 30 (Reuters) – In a blow to LGBT rights, the U.S. Supreme Court’s conservative majority on Friday ruled that the constitutional right to free speech allows certain businesses to refuse to provide services for same-sex weddings, a decision that the dissenting liberal justices called a “license to discriminate.”

The justices ruled 6-3 along ideological lines in favor of Denver-area web designer Lorie Smith, who cited her Christian beliefs in challenging a Colorado anti-discrimination law. The justices overturned a lower court’s ruling that had rejected Smith’s bid for an exemption from a Colorado law that prohibits discrimination based on sexual orientation and other factors.

Smith’s business, called 303 Creative, sells custom web designs, but she opposed providing her services for same-sex weddings.

Conservative Justice Neil Gorsuch wrote in the ruling that Colorado’s law would force Smith to create speech that she does not believe, in violation of the U.S. Constitution’s First Amendment.

“Were the rule otherwise, the better the artist, the finer the writer, the more unique his talent, the more easily his voice could be conscripted to disseminate the government’s preferred messages. That would not respect the First Amendment; more nearly, it would spell its demise,” Gorsuch 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,” Gorsuch added.

The court’s three liberal justices dissented. Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote, “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 added, “By issuing this new license to discriminate in a case brought by a company that seeks to deny same-sex couples the full and equal enjoyment of its services, the immediate, symbolic effect of the decision is to mark gays and lesbians for second-class status. In this way, the decision itself inflicts a kind of stigmatic harm, on top of any harm caused by denials of service.”

The decision by the court, on the final day of rulings in its term that began in October, comes at a time when laws targeting the rights of transgender and other LGBT people are being pursued by Republican legislators in numerous conservative-leaning states.

The case pitted the right of LGBT people to seek goods and services from businesses without discrimination against the free speech rights, as asserted by Smith, of artists – as she called herself – whose businesses provide services to the public.

The justices in recent years has backed LGBT rights in major cases, though the court has since moved rightward. A 2015 decision by the court legalized gay marriage nationwide. In a 2020 ruling, it found that a federal law barring workplace discrimination protects gay and transgender employees.

Smith, who lives in the Denver suburb of Littleton, is an evangelical Christian who has said she believes marriage is only between a man and a woman. She preemptively sued Colorado’s civil rights commission and other state officials in 2016 because she said she feared being punished for refusing to serve gay weddings under Colorado’s public accommodations law.

Smith and her lawyers have said she is not discriminating against anyone but objects to messages that contradict her Christian beliefs.

Colorado, civil rights groups and numerous legal scholars warned of a ripple effect if Smith won, allowing discrimination based not only on a business owners’ religious beliefs, but potentially racist, sexist and anti-religious views.

Sotomayor warned of that very outcome in her dissent, particularly since the case was decided on free speech grounds, rather than religious rights.

“A website designer could equally refuse to create a wedding website for an interracial couple, for example … A stationer could refuse to sell a birth announcement for a disabled couple because she opposes their having a child. A large retail store could reserve its family portrait services for ‘traditional’ families. And so on,” Sotomayor wrote.

Public accommodations laws exist in many states, banning discrimination in areas such as housing, hotels, retail businesses, restaurants and educational institutions. Colorado first enacted one in 1885. Its current Anti-Discrimination Act bars businesses open to the public from denying goods or services to people because of race, gender, sexual orientation, religion and certain other characteristics.

Colorado argued that its Anti-Discrimination Act regulates sales, not speech, to ensure “equal access and equal dignity.” Smith thus is free to sell whatever she wants, including websites with biblical passages stating an opposite-sex vision of marriage.

Kelley Robinson, president of LGBT civil rights group Human Rights Campaign, called Friday’s decision “a deeply troubling crack in our progress and should be alarming to us all. People deserve to have commercial spaces that are safe and welcoming. This decision continues to affirm how radical and out-of-touch this court is.”

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, a Democrat, said in a statement: “Refusing service based on whom someone loves is just as bigoted and hateful as refusing service because of race or religion. And this is bigotry that the vast majority of Americans find completely unacceptable.”

President Joe Biden’s administration, supporting Colorado in the case, argued that Smith’s bid for an exemption went too far because she sought a right to refuse to create a wedding website of any kind for a same-sex couple, even a basic one simply stating logistical details.

Reporting by Andrew Chung in New York; Editing by Will Dunham

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