Supreme Court Uses Imaginary Gay Guy To Legalize Anti-LGBTQ Discrimination

No one asked Lorie Smith to make them a website for their same-sex wedding.

Colorado graphic designer Lorie Smith is the single most saccharine human being I have ever come across in my entire life. She is sentient marzipan. She is also a raging bigot and a fraud.

And the Supreme Court just ruled, in the case of  303 Creative LLC v. Elenis,  that she does not "have" to make websites for same-sex marriages, regardless of Colorado's anti-discrimination law barring discrimination against LGBTQ+ people. The law was previously challenged in Masterpiece Cakeshop v. Colorado Civil Rights Commission, when the Court ruled in that the Colorado Civil Rights Commission had not employed "religious neutrality" when it determined that Masterpiece owner Jack Phillips had discriminated against a same-sex couple seeking a wedding cake, and therefore somehow violated his free exercise of religion.

Smith, an evangelical Christian designer represented by noted SPLC-labeled hate group the Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF) — which also defended Phillips in his case — argued that her graphic design and web design business was an "art" and that she shouldn't be required to produce "art" for people who are doing things that are against her religion.

In the entirely unsurprising decision, the court split along ideological lines, with all of the conservative justices being very excited to hand Smith her win and all three liberal justices opposing it.

"In this case," Judge Neil Gorsuch wrote in the majority opinion, "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. 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.' Consistent with the First Amendment, the Nation’s answer is tolerance, not coercion. 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."

Oh, isn't that sweet? He just really loves the First Amendment!

This decision, however, opens the door for any business to discriminate against protected classes of people so long as they claim that what they are doing is "art" or some other form of personal expression. Given that many people feel that way about their work, it's going to go a lot further than just some rinky dink graphic designer in Colorado. Literally anyone in a customer-facing position could also claim that helping or interacting with someone of a protected class is "compelled speech." Bigots could claim that having to interact with their coworkers belonging to a protected class of people is "compelled speech." A male boss could come right out and say that he is not hiring any women because he doesn't want to have to talk to them. That is the direction that the "compelled speech" train is headed.

"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" Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote in her dissent. "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. The Court also holds that the company has a right to post a notice that says, 'no [wedding websites] will be sold if they will be used for gay marriages.’”

Sotomayor pointed out in her dissent that public accommodations laws have two purposes — to ensure that people receive “equal access to publicly available goods and services” and “to vindicate ‘the deprivation of personal dignity that surely accompanies denials of equal access to public establishments.’”

People should not have to live in a world where they have to worry that they will be discriminated against in this way. They should be able to look for a graphic designer for their wedding invitations without having to prepare for the gut punch of "Sorry, we don't serve your kind here."

It is worth noting that there are also a lot of people who have believed or currently believe that interracial dating and marriage are against the Christian religion and that this was, in fact, the very cause that the Christian Right in the United States was founded on. Indeed, just a few years ago a wedding venue in Mississippi made headlines for telling a customer that they did not perform interracial weddings because of their "Christian beliefs."

But back to Lorie Smith. Lorie Smith said that she wanted to expand her graphic design business to include weddings and wedding invitations and the like, but that she wouldn't be able to do that unless she were allowed to discriminate against gay people — which was a violation of Colorado's anti-discrimination law. She didn't actually do wedding websites or wedding invitations, and literally no one had ever asked her to.

 Sort of. 

When Smith started out with her case, the state moved to dismiss it on the grounds that no one had ever actually asked her to do a website or wedding invitations for a same sex couple. The ADF initially argued that she shouldn't have to prove that anyone would actually want her to do this in order to challenge the law, but soon enough ... a request appeared.

Via The New Republic:  

Not until February 2017 did ADF include the text of the “Stewart” inquiry and argue its relevance to the case. “Notably, any claim that Lorie will never receive a request to create a custom website celebrating a same-sex ceremony is no longer legitimate because Lorie has received such a request,” the group wrote. “Even though she is not currently in the wedding industry, Lorie received an email inquiry on September 21, 2016.” Smith elaborated in a sworn statement that she “received a request through the ‘contact’ webpage on my website from a person named, ‘Stewart,’ reference number 9741406, to create graphic designs for invitations and other materials for a same-sex wedding (‘same-sex wedding request’).” She added that a “true and accurate copy” of the “same-sex wedding request” would be submitted with the statement. Why it took until possibly February 2017 to introduce the inquiry is not clear.

Long story short, an investigation by The New Republic — they were the only news organization that did the work of "call the guy named in the suit" — has found that while Stewart exists, he never sent this request, didn't even know about it until recently, and was married to a woman at the time it was sent, therefore having absolutely zero interest in securing Lorie Smith's services for his wedding to a man named Mike.

Ironically, Stewart is also a far better established web designer than Lorie Smith and has never heard of her.

While the ADF did not mention Stewart or the wholly fabricated "Mike" in their arguments in front of the court, this case very likely would not have moved forward without the imaginary request. So in addition to being bigots, they're also frauds who may very well have fabricated the request in order to be able to make the case to the Supreme Court that a web designer from Colorado should be able to discriminate against gay people.

But on the bright side, New Jersey Congresswoman Bonnie Watson Coleman has re-introduced her bill, the Customer Non-Discrimination Act, and if it is passed, it will undo the damage of this ruling.

According to a press release, the bill would "amend the Civil Rights Act of 1964 by adding sex, sexual orientation, and gender identity to shield LGBTQ+ people from discrimination like that experienced by the couple that sought a wedding cake in Masterpiece Cakeshop, Ltd. v. Colorado Civil Rights Commission ." It also states that "the bill would also make updates to the public accommodations covered by the 1964 law to include retail stores, banks, legal services, healthcare providers and transportation services — ensuring that all these public facing entities remain open to everyone."

Which is exactly how things should be.

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