The Supreme Court has agreed to hear a fascinating and important free speech case that could protect everyone’s beliefs, regardless of what party is in power.
On Tuesday, the Supreme Court agreed to take 303 Creative v. Elenis, a case that’s sort of a preemptive strike on Colorado’s public accommodation or anti-discrimination law. Remember Jack Phillips of cake shop controversy? It’s like that. Multiple states, members of Congress, and publishers submitted amicus briefs recognizing the importance of this case and asking the highest court to take it.
Lori Smith is a Denver-area website designer who wants to start designing websites for weddings via her company 303 Creative. She’ll make websites for any person regardless of race, creed, sexual orientation, or gender identity. However, she does not agree with gay marriage due to her orthodox religious beliefs. So, she would have to decline to design websites in celebration of such a marriage.
In an America that truly honored the First Amendment, Smith’s stance should be protected by law. Likewise, if Smith approached a website designer about designing a website for her marriage to a man and this person chose only to celebrate gay weddings, this should be perfectly acceptable under the law from a free speech perspective. In America, there are plenty of website designers with a myriad of beliefs, all of which should be protected under the First Amendment.
However, due to Colorado’s Anti-Discrimination Act, if Smith started making unique wedding websites, she’d have to create custom sites for the marriages of same-sex couples as well as opposite-sex couples or she’d be breaking the law. She doesn’t just have a notion this will happen. A federal court has already told her this will happen.
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 10th Circuit has already heard Smith’s case and ruled that Colorado’s Anti-Discrimination Act forced Lorie “to create websites — and thus, speech — that [she] would otherwise refuse.”
In his dissent, 10th Circuit Chief Judge Timothy Tymkovich said the ruling “subverts our core understandings of the First Amendment.” Opinion writers overuse the term “Orwellian,” but this ruling, as the court applied Colorado’s Anti-Discrimination Law, was truly Orwellian. It must be overturned.
Thankfully, the First Amendment was designed to protect just such beliefs. Anti-discrimination laws were formed to prevent discrimination, to keep malicious bigots in check. But Colorado’s language is such that it turns the First Amendment on its head. It now makes the people who embrace the most traditional beliefs the “bigots.”
It’s good to see the Supreme Court take up such an important case.
Nicole Russell ( @russell_nm ) is a contributor to the Washington Examiner’s Beltway Confidential blog. She is a Fort Worth Star-Telegram opinion writer and previously worked in Republican politics in Minnesota.
