LGBTQ+ advocates are speaking out against the Supreme Court’s ruling in the case 303 Creative v. Elenis. Released on Friday, the decision saw the court side with a Colorado website designer who sued for the right to refuse service to LGBTQ+ people.
The Court heard oral arguments for the case in December, whose plaintiff was a website designer named Lorie Smith who said that her Christian beliefs prevented her from creating websites that celebrated same-sex marriage. A Colorado public accommodation law requires businesses to offer services to all customers or face a fine.
Justice Sonia Sotomayor dissented, noting that the ruling was the first instance in the history of the Court granting “a business open to the public a constitutional right to refuse to serve members of a protected class.”
LGBTQ+ advocates spoke out over the weekend about the ruling’s potential impacts, characterizing it as being a “dangerous siren call” and a “foothold” for more potential anti-LGBTQ+ discrimination.
The case was at least partially predicated on a request the plaintiff said she’d received from a same-sex couple named Stewart and Mike, whom court filings said reached out in 2016 to request that she make a website for their gay wedding. A New Republic report released last week revealed that the couple had never actually reached out to Smith and that the presumed couple at the foundation of the case was fictional, an aspect of the case that U.S. Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg criticized during an appearance on CNN.
“I think it’s very revealing that there’s no evidence that this web designer was ever even approached by anyone asking for a website for a same-sex wedding,” Buttigieg said on Sunday. “Matter of fact, it appears this web designer only went into the wedding business for the purpose of provoking a case like this.”
While pointing out that the ruling will have a “limited practical impact,” Lambda Legal’s chief legal officer Jennifer C. Pizer told The Advocate that the decision “does continue the Court majority’s dangerous siren call to those trying to return the country to the social and legal norms of the nineteenth century.”
State organizations also spoke out against the decision. Equality Florida, which has been at the forefront of the fight against the anti-LGBTQ+ agenda of Governor Ron Desantis, said the Court’s decision creates a “foothold for refusing customized, ‘expressive services’ that would compel the creator to share a message with which they disagree,” adding that the “ruling neither creates a broad license to discriminate nor wholesale repeals vital civil rights protections.”
Lorie Smith, the Colorado website designer behind 303 Creative, argued that creating a website was a form of speech and that she didn’t want to create a website with a message that she disagreed with, namely one promoting a same-sex marriage. It’s a legal loophole that Vox called an “uncharacteristically strong argument.” Smith’s legal team argued that the First Amendment protects an artist’s right to choose what to say and that Smith should not have to create a website that she disagrees with.
“If I continue creating for weddings consistent with my beliefs, the State of Colorado intends to fully come after me,” Smith told the New York Times in December. “Rather than wait to be punished, I decided to take a stand to protect my First Amendment rights. I shouldn’t have to be punished before I challenge an unjust law.”
The ruling underscores the need for federal-level LGBTQ+ discrimination protections, something President Biden promised to address within his first 100 days in office by passing the Equality Act. Earlier this year, one of the lobbies most directly involved in pushing the Equality Act as a national priority quietly disbanded, stalling hopes that the divided Senate would take up the bill, which already passed in the House.
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