Gay Rights vs. Free Speech Supreme Court Backs Web Designer Opposed to Same-Sex Marriage
"The decision, which turned on the court’s interpretation of the First Amendment, appeared to suggest that the rights of L.G.B.T.Q. people are on more vulnerable legal footing, particularly when they are at odds with claims of religious freedom.
Pinned
In a 6-to-3 vote, split along ideological lines, the Supreme Court sided on Friday with a web designer in Colorado who said she had a First Amendment right to refuse to provide services for same-sex marriages despite a state law that forbids discrimination against gay people.
Writing for the majority, Justice Neil M. Gorsuch said that “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.”
Split 6-3 along ideological lines, the Supreme Court on Friday ruled that the First Amendment prohibits Colorado from forcing a website designer to create a product that conveys messages contrary to the designer’s religious beliefs, a decision that could encourage businesses to begin denying certain services to L.G.B.T.Q. people.
The ruling was the latest to show the current court’s deference to religious conviction in interpreting laws — in this case an antidiscrimination statute — as conflicting with the freedom of religious expression.
Federal law protects Americans from being discriminated against in public places like retail stores on the basis of disability and “race, color, religion or national origin.”
Many states go further. Colorado is one of about 20 states, along with the District of Columbia, that have laws explicitly protecting people from being refused services or otherwise discriminated against in public because of their sexual orientation or gender identity. Additionally, several states interpret existing laws against sex discrimination to apply to bias relating to sexual orientation and gender identity, even though they do not have laws explicitly forbidding such discrimination.
The court’s decision in favor of a Colorado web designer, Lorie Smith, had an unusual feature: It was based on conjecture and speculation.
Ms. Smith, who objects to providing wedding-related services for same-sex marriages, never turned down a gay couple. She had certainly never been punished for violating a state law that forbids discrimination based on sexual orientation.
It is not clear how far-reaching the consequences may be of the Supreme Court ruling in favor of a web designer who objected to making wedding sites for same-sex customers despite a Colorado anti-discrimination law.
The 6-to-3 ruling handed down on Friday turned on the First Amendment. Because the designer, Lorie Smith, opposes same-sex marriage, the majority said, the state cannot compel her to make sites implicitly endorsing such unions’ legitimacy as a condition of getting into the general wedding website business.
Gov. Jared Polis of Colorado, who was the nation's first sitting governor to have a same-sex wedding, said in a statement that the court had “decided in favor of discrimination.”
“Americans have seen the Supreme Court become increasingly obsessed with taking away freedoms,” Polis added, referring to other recent rulings striking down affirmative action and rejecting student loan relief.
Conservatives who have moral and theological objections to gay marriage saw the Supreme Court’s decision on Friday as reassurance that they would be able to assert their beliefs in a public square that they see as increasingly hostile to them.
In a 6-to-3 vote, split along ideological lines, the justices agreed with a web designer in Colorado who said she had a First Amendment right to refuse to provide services for same-sex marriages, despite a state law that forbids discrimination against gay people.
Gay and transgender rights organizations on Friday condemned the Supreme Court ruling backing a Colorado website designer’s bid to refuse to provide services for same-sex marriages, calling the decision a dangerous backsliding on L.G.B.T.Q. rights and out of step with public opinion.
But they said that the impact of the decision would be limited by the specific facts of the case and vowed to resist any future efforts to expand its scope.
In the latest case involving same-sex marriage rights, religious freedom and discrimination, the Supreme Court on Friday ruled in favor of a web designer in Colorado who said she had a First Amendment right not to provide services for same-sex marriages despite a state law that bans discrimination against gay people.
Here’s a brief look at some of the most prominent cases before Friday’s:
Michael D. Shear
White House correspondentIn a statement on the court’s ruling, President Biden said he is “deeply concerned that the decision could invite more discrimination against LGBTQI+ Americans.” He added, “More broadly, today’s decision weakens long-standing laws that protect all Americans against discrimination in public accommodations — including people of color, people with disabilities, people of faith and women.”
Michael D. Shear
White House correspondentBiden also reiterated his call for Congress to pass the Equality Act, which would explicitly ban discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity. The legislation, first passed by the Democratic-led House in 2019, stands little to no chance of advancing in this Congress.
The Supreme Court’s decision on Friday in favor of a Colorado web designer has echoes of a 2018 case about a baker who had turned away a gay couple seeking a wedding cake.
But that decision, Masterpiece Cakeshop v. Colorado Civil Rights Commission, failed to rule on the basic conflict in that case and the new one: whether the First Amendment allows businesses open to the public to violate anti-discrimination laws based on their owners’ religious or other convictions.
Ruth Graham
Covering religionAt a news conference in Washington, Lorie Smith, the Colorado web designer who opposes same-sex marriage and challenged her state’s antidiscrimination law, said she was grateful to the Supreme Court, which “affirmed today that Colorado can’t force me or anyone to say something we don’t believe.”
Ruth Graham
Covering religionKristin Waggoner, general counsel for Alliance Defending Freedom, the group that represented Smith, addressed a recent report in The New Republic questioning the origin of Smith's lawsuit. Waggoner said that whether a same-sex couple had actually requested a wedding website from Smith was irrelevant, because the suit was filed as a pre-enforcement request before she began offering her services. Waggoner said the request was “genuine,” though, and called the suggestion that her organization might have fabricated it “reprehensible and disgusting.”
Lorie Smith, the plaintiff in this case, is a Christian who “believes that marriage is the union of one man and woman,” according to the Alliance Defending Freedom, the conservative legal group that represents her.
She is also a Colorado native, and her business, 303 Creative, is named for a Denver area code. The concentration of evangelical power in the state has made it a recurring ground for conservative activism and culture-war skirmishes for decades.
Jeremy W. Peters
Covering the media's intersection with politics, culture and lawIn the majority opinion, Justice Neil Gorsuch repeatedly uses the word “compel” to describe how a Colorado antidiscrimination law could require business owners to express ideas they don’t believe in. “The opportunity to think for ourselves and to express those thoughts freely is among our most cherished liberties,” he wrote, adding, “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 group representing the plaintiff in the case, the Alliance Defending Freedom, has been the driving force behind a national campaign to limit the legal protections that courts and legislatures have extended to L.G.B.T.Q. people in recent years.
The group, based in Scottsdale, Ariz., has been involved for years in high-profile cases before the Supreme Court, and also in smaller legal battles over L.G.B.T.Q. rights in places such as Coeur d’Alene, Idaho. Two decades ago, for instance, it urged the Supreme Court not to overturn a Texas law that made homosexual activity illegal. (The court ruled 6 to 3 in 2003 that the law was unconstitutional.) More recently, it defended a Colorado baker who argued that creating a wedding cake for a same-sex couple would violate his religious beliefs.
Liam Stack
Metro religion correspondentKelley Robinson, president of the Human Rights Campaign, the country’s largest L.G.B.T.Q. advocacy organization, said in a statement that the ruling was “a deeply troubling crack in our progress and should be alarming to us all.” She added, “Our nation has been on a path of progress — deciding over the course of many decades that businesses should be open regardless of race, disability or religion. People deserve to have commercial spaces that are safe and welcoming.”
The number of same-sex couple households in the United States has surpassed one million for the first time, according to data released by the Census Bureau, reflecting a shift toward wider acceptance of such arrangements in American culture and politics.
According to the American Community Survey, which is produced every year as a companion to the decennial census, there were about 1.2 million same-sex couple households in 2021. About 710,000 of the couples — nearly 60 percent — were married, and about 500,000 were unmarried.
Jeremy W. Peters
Covering the media's intersection with politics, culture and lawThe majority opinion by Justice Neil Gorsuch cites a major free speech decision involving gay rights: Boy Scouts of America v. Dale, a 2000 case in which the court ruled 5-4 that the Boy Scouts could exclude gay scoutmasters because opposition to homosexuality is part of the organization’s “expressive message.”
For decades, opposition to same-sex marriage was a marquee issue for the religious right in the United States. Activists like Anita Bryant, Jerry Falwell and James Dobson characterized homosexuality as a threat to traditional family life.
When the Supreme Court ruled in Obergefell v. Hodges in 2015, the head of the Family Research Council, Tony Perkins, initially warned that the case would be “the downfall of America.” The evangelist Franklin Graham told Christianity Today in 2015 that the country had “taken a nosedive off of the moral diving board into the cesspool of humanity.”
Ruth Graham
Covering religionMike Pence, an evangelical Christian who is running for president, praised the court's decision in a statement pointing out that, as vice president under Donald J. Trump, he had “played a role” in appointing three of the justices in the majority. “Religious freedom is the bedrock of our Constitution,” he said, “and today’s decision reminds us that we must elect leaders who will defend that right and appoint judges who support religious freedom.”
Jeremy W. Peters
Covering the media's intersection with politics, culture and lawThree years ago, Justice Neil Gorsuch, who wrote today's opinion in favor of the website designer who opposes same-sex marriage, was the author of a very different opinion from the court, ruling that a landmark civil rights law protects gay and transgender employees from workplace discrimination. “An employer who fires an individual merely for being gay or transgender defies the law,” he wrote then.
Jeremy W. Peters
Covering the media's intersection with politics, culture and lawThat case, however, did not involve a constitutional right like free speech. Rather, the court was asked to interpret the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which bars employment discrimination based on race, religion, national origin and sex. Justice Gorsuch wrote that it would be impossible “to discriminate against a person for being homosexual or transgender without discriminating against that individual based on sex.”
Ruth Graham
Covering religionProgressive interfaith groups were among those condemning the ruling. “This decision will have a devastating ripple effect across the country by creating a permission structure, backed by the force of law, to discriminate and endanger LGBTQ+ people and trans youth who are already so at risk,” the Rev. Paul Brandeis Raushenbush, president and chief executive of the Interfaith Alliance, said in a statement.
Charlie Savage
Washington correspondentIn his majority opinion, Justice Neil Gorsuch used George Orwell to take a swipe at the dissenting liberal justices, writing that they had abandoned “what this Court’s cases have recognized time and time again: A commitment to speech for only some messages and some persons is no commitment at all.” He added, citing a quote attributed to Orwell, “If liberty means anything at all, it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear.”
Charlie Savage
Washington correspondentJustice Sonia Sotomayor responds to the Orwell reference in her dissent. Emphasizing her view that prohibiting business from discriminating against gay people is a regulation of conduct, not speech, she writes: “The majority’s repeated invocation of this Orwellian thought policing is revealing of just how much it misunderstands this case.”
Ruth Graham
Covering religionToday’s ruling comes a day after another decision cheered by religious conservatives, in which the court ruled in favor of a postal carrier who refused to work on the Sabbath. The rulings come from a court that has now delivered a string of similar judgments in favor of religious conservatives.
The public’s attitude toward same-sex marriage has been among the most significant shifts in American public opinion in recent decades.
About seven in 10 American adults said in May that marriage between same-sex couples should be recognized by the law, a record high according to Gallup.
Charlie Savage
Washington correspondentThe majority and dissenting opinions, which were doubtless finished some time ago, make no reference to a development that popped up yesterday. The New Republic published an article reporting that the Colorado website designer who opposes same-sex marriage, and whose challenge to Colorado’s antidiscrimination law took this case to the Supreme Court, may not have received an actual request from a gay couple to create a wedding website.
Ruth Graham
Covering religionThe Alliance Defending Freedom, which represented the Colorado designer who did not want to make a website celebrating gay marriage, praised the ruling. “The U.S. Supreme Court rightly reaffirmed that the government can’t force Americans to say things they don’t believe,” Kristin Waggoner, the group’s general counsel, said in a statement.
Read the Document
The Supreme Court has ruled, 6-to-3, in favor of a Colorado website maker who does not want to make wedding websites celebrating same-sex marriages.
Read DocumentCharlie Savage
Washington correspondentIn a dissent, Justice Sonia Sotomayor called the ruling “profoundly wrong,” arguing that the Colorado antidiscrimination law “targets conduct, not speech, for regulation, and the act of discrimination has never constituted protected expression under the First Amendment. Our Constitution contains no right to refuse service to a disfavored group.”
Charlie Savage
Washington correspondentIn a particularly scathing paragraph, Justice Sotomayor later writes: “Today is a sad day in American constitutional law and in the lives of LGBT people. The Supreme Court of the United States declares that a particular kind of business, though open to the public, has a constitutional right to refuse to serve members of a protected class. The Court does so for the first time in its history.” She added, "The immediate, symbolic effect of the decision is to mark gays and lesbians for second-class status.”
Charlie Savage
Washington correspondentThe website maker who filed the lawsuit challenging Colorado's antidiscrimination law does not want to make wedding websites celebrating gay marriages. In the majority opinion, Justice Neil Gorsuch wrote that “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.”
Charlie Savage
Washington correspondentJustice Gorsuch added: “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.”
Jeremy W. Peters
Covering the media's intersection with politics, culture and lawIn a 6-3 decision, the Supreme Court rules that the First Amendment prohibits Colorado from forcing a website designer to create expressive designs that convey messages with which the designer disagrees.
The Supreme Court on Friday sided with a web designer in Colorado who said she had a First Amendment right to refuse to provide services for same-sex marriages despite a state law that forbids discrimination against gay people.
In a 6 to 3 vote, split along ideological lines, the court held that the First Amendment prohibits Colorado from forcing a website designer to create expressive designs speaking messages with which the designer disagrees. Justice Neil M. Gorsuch wrote the majority opinion."
