WASHINGTON, D.C. — The U.S. Supreme Court of Appeals ruled that a web designer had First Amendment protections in rejecting to make wedding websites for LGBTQ+ couples.
The court ruled 6-3 that the state of Colorado could not force Lorie Smith to serve queer couples who wanted wedding websites if she did not want to.
Smith said she did not want to create websites for same-sex weddings due to her religious beliefs. Justices Neil Gorsuch, John Roberts, Samuel Alito, Amy Coney Barrett, Brett Kavanaugh and Clarence Thomas sided with Smith, while Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson dissented.
"As states continue passing harmful laws that seek to dehumanize and erase the existence of LGBTQ+ people, we are disappointed to see the Supreme Court deliver yet another blow by allowing business owners’ personal prejudice to overcome decades of legal precedent," Beth Littrell, senior supervising attorney at the Southern Poverty Law Center, said.
Littrell called the decisions misguided, saying it fails to recognize that personal, including religious, beliefs about LGBTQ+ people do not form a constitutional basis to discriminate against LGBTQ+ people in public accommodations.
"Equal access to public goods and services is a cornerstone of civil rights and a free and open society," Littrell said. "Although most Americans reject allowing businesses to use religion as an excuse to deny service, six Supreme Court justices have granted businesses a license to discriminate."
Littrell said non-discrimination laws exist to respect the rights of all Americans.
"Non-discrimination laws were not created in a vacuum; they exist to respect the rights of every American because exclusion and segregation in the public market hurt us all," Littrell said. "This rollback of civil rights — first by states and now by the Supreme Court — threatens all of us. The LGBTQ+ community deserves to enjoy the same rights and privileges as all Americans."
Smith claims she wanted to expand her business into areas of weddings and wrote a webpage explaining why she won't create a website for same-sex couples, but under a Colorado accommodations law, she wasn't able to post the statement.
"Consistent with the First Amendment, the Nation’s answer is tolerance, not coercion," Gorsuch wrote in the June 30 court opinion. "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. Colorado cannot deny that promise consistent with the First Amendment."
Gorsuch wrote that the First Amendment’s protections belong to all, not just to speakers whose motives the government finds worthy.
"In this case, 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," he wrote. "In the past, other States in Barnette, Hurley, and Dale have similarly tested the First Amendment’s boundaries by seeking to compel speech they thought vital at the time. But abiding the Constitution’s commitment to the freedom of speech means all will encounter ideas that are 'misguided, or even hurtful.'"
Sotomayor wrote in the dissent that the decision would undermine the government's interest in ensuring that all Americans have access equally to the public marketplace.
"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," she wrote. "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."
U.S. Supreme Court case number: 21-475
