WASHINGTON (AP) — The Supreme Court ‘s conservative majority sounded sympathetic Monday to a Christian graphic artist who objects to designing wedding websites for gay couples, a dispute that’s the latest clash of religion and gay rights to land at the highest court.
The designer and her supporters say that ruling against her would force artists — from painters and photographers to writers and musicians — to do work that is against their beliefs. Her opponents, meanwhile, say that if she wins, a range of businesses will be able to discriminate, refusing to serve Black customers, Jewish or Muslim people, interracial or interfaith couples or immigrants, among others.
Over more than two hours of spirited arguments, the justices repeatedly tested out what ruling for the designer could mean, using detailed and sometimes colorful hypothetical scenarios. Those included a Black Santa asked to take a picture with a child dressed in a Ku Klux Klan outfit, a photographer asked to take pictures for the Jewish dating website JDate and also the marital infidelity website Ashley Madison, and a food business called “Grandma Helen’s Protestant Provisions.”
Justice Neil Gorsuch, one of three high court appointees of former President Donald Trump, described Lorie Smith, the website designer in the case, as “an individual who says she will sell and does sell to everyone, all manner of websites, (but) that she won’t sell a website that requires her to express a view about marriage that she finds offensive.”
Where to draw the line for what a business might do without violating state anti-discrimination laws was a big question in Monday’s arguments at the high court.
Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson asked whether a photography store in a shopping mall could refuse to take pictures of Black people on Santa’s lap.
“Their policy is that only white children can be photographed with Santa in this way, because that’s how they view the scenes with Santa that they’re trying to depict,” Jackson said.
Justice Sonia Sotomayor repeatedly pressed Kristen Waggoner, the lawyer for Smith, over other categories. “How about people who don’t believe in interracial marriage? Or about people who don’t believe that disabled people should get married? Where’s the line?” Sotomayor asked.
But Justice Samuel Alito, who seemed to favor Smith, asked whether it’s “fair to equate opposition to same-sex marriage to opposition to interracial marriage?”
The case comes at a time when the court is dominated 6-3 by conservatives and follows a series of cases in which the justices have sided with religious plaintiffs. Across the street from the court, lawmakers at the Capitol are finalizing what would be a landmark bill protecting same-sex marriage.
The proposed law, which also would protect interracial marriage, has gained momentum following the high court’s decision earlier this year to end constitutional protections for abortion. That decision to overturn the 1973 Roe v. Wade ruling prompted questions about whether the court — now that it is more conservative — might also overturn its 2015 decision declaring a nationwide right to same-sex marriage. Justice Clarence Thomas explicitly said that decision should be reconsidered.
The case being argued before the high court Monday involves Smith, a graphic artist and website designer in Colorado who wants to begin offering wedding websites. Smith says her Christian faith prevents her from creating websites celebrating same-sex marriages.
“Ms. Smith believes opposite-sex marriage honors scripture and same-sex marriage contradicts it,” Waggoner told the justices.
But offering wedding websites to same-sex couples and refusing to design them for opposite sex couples could get Smith in trouble with state law. Colorado, like most other states, has what’s called a public accommodation law that says if Smith offers wedding websites to the public, she must provide them to all customers. Businesses that violate the law can be fined, among other things.
Five years ago, the Supreme Court heard a different challenge involving Colorado’s law and a baker, Jack Phillips, who objected to designing a wedding cake for a gay couple. That case ended with a limited decision and set up a return of the issue to the high court. Waggoner, of the Alliance Defending Freedom, also represented Phillips.
Like Phillips, Smith says her objection is not to working with gay people. She has had gay clients, her lawyer said. But she objects to creating messages supporting same-sex marriage, just as she wouldn’t create a website for a couple who met while they both were married to other people and then divorced.
Smith says Colorado’s law violates her free speech rights. Her opponents, including the Biden administration, the American Civil Liberties Union and the NAACP Legal Defense & Educational Fund, disagree.
Twenty mostly liberal states, including California and New York, are supporting Colorado, while 20 other, mostly Republican,states, including Arizona, Indiana, Ohio and Tennessee, are supporting Smith.
The case is 303 Creative LLC v. Elenis, 21-476.
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“They say that if she wins, a range of businesses will be able to discriminate, refusing to serve Black customers, Jewish or Muslim people, interracial or interfaith couples or immigrants, among others.”,,,,,kinda like , no shoes no shirt no service. Frankly I believe some establishments should enforce dress codes so sane people can again shop at Walmart without seeing parts of people’s bodies that should only be revealed in private.
Just since when did individual business owners cede control of their businesses to government control freaks? When THE PEOPLE own the businesses but government CONTROLS the businesses it is call Fascism! I would much rather live in a nation where individual blacks can refuse to serve whites soul food, Jews can refuse to serve gentiles Kosher, and gays can refuse to serve straight people street chicken than in a country where it all gets government shoved down your throat just because weak children who got sand kicked in their faces on the beach get elected, and as adults given power just want to get even.,,,not because it is right, but because they can.
One need not tolerate or accept every belief or action of another.
It is better to be condemned for standing up for one’s morals and values.
Than to be on their knees bowing down for the crumbs and the whims of the corrupt and immoral Liberal Democrats.
Amendment 1 – Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.
Lev 20:13
13 “‘If a man lies with a man as one lies with a woman, both of them have done what is detestable. They must be put to death; their blood will be on their own heads.
Rom 1:24-27
24 Therefore God gave them over in the sinful desires of their hearts to sexual impurity for the degrading of their bodies with one another. 25 They exchanged the truth of God for a lie, and worshiped and served created things rather than the Creator-who is forever praised. Amen.
26 Because of this, God gave them over to shameful lusts. Even their women exchanged natural relations for unnatural ones. 27 In the same way the men also abandoned natural relations with women and were inflamed with lust for one another. Men committed indecent acts with other men, and received in themselves the due penalty for their perversion.
This will be a sticky wicket, balancing rights guarenteed by The Constitution where religion is off limits to government intervention and those very loud voices that want religion, especially the Judeo-Christian type, out of the public discourse!The left is bent on redefining the language to suit its own needs, this is the same dilemma that faces Congress except the Rupublicans capitulated!
What peeves me off most about all of this Bull.. IS WE ONLY EVER see the LGBTQ Mafia, go after Christians.. Never jews. Never islam. Never Buhdissm or shintoism.
JUST CHRISTIANS!!!
Sexual perversion defaces the image of God in man just as surely as a spray-painted smiley face would deface the Mona Lisa, the Sistine chapel or a BLM spray can, used on our Christian American heroes.
I thought LGBTQ meant Let’s Get Brandon To Quit which makes more sense.