WASHINGTON | The Supreme Court has agreed to hear a new Colorado clash involving religion and the rights of LGBT people.
The high court said Tuesday it would hear the case of Colorado-based web designer Lorie Smith. Smith offers graphic and website design services and wants to expand to wedding website services, but she says her religious beliefs would lead her to decline any request from a same-sex couple to design a wedding website. She also wants to post a statement on her website about her beliefs, but that would run afoul of a Colorado anti-discrimination law. Smith had argued the law violates her free speech and religious rights.
The Supreme Court said in taking the case, however, that it would look only at the free speech issue. It said it would decide whether a law that requires an artist to speak or stay silent violates the free speech clause of the First Amendment. The case is expected to be argued in the fall.
In a 2-1 ruling last year, the Denver-based 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals denied Smith’s attempt to overturn a lower court ruling throwing out her legal challenge. The panel said Colorado had a compelling interest in protecting the “dignity interests” of members of marginalized groups through its law, the Colorado Anti-Discrimination Act.
The law, which prohibits discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation, is the same one at issue in the case of Colorado baker Jack Phillips that was decided in 2018 by the U.S. Supreme Court.
The high court said at the time that the Colorado Civil Rights Commission had acted with anti-religious bias against Phillips after he refused to bake a cake for two men who were getting married. But it did not rule on the larger issue of whether a business can invoke religious objections to refuse service to LGBTQ people.
Both Smith and Phillips were represented by the Arizona-based Alliance Defending Freedom.
The manner in which the SCOTUS has framed this particular case and the argument that it will hear–that this is a “free-speech” infringement–will make it very interesting. So all of us need immediately to quit referring to it as a gay-rights or discrimination case, since this part of it will not be decided by any ruling, or even argued.
I think the Court will rule that this person is entitled to say anything she wants, while skirting the discriminatory effect of her behavior, and leaving that for a future Court to hear. Anyone can say they think homosexuality is a sin or whatever, but relying on that belief to mistreat another person is yet another matter entirely. This is the same result of a previous case involving a misguided baker. But the group that is behind all such cases will keep bringing them forward until it gets the ruling it wants. As with the issue of choice, the group may be able to achieve its goal soon, since the Court is solidly conservative, or it may have to wait until all-nine Justices are conservatives, which is the ultimate goal in all of this.
This is a ‘very important’ issue this ‘Court’ needs to address, am I right? The fact that our Democracy is in peril because they (SCOTUS) allows gerrymandering and states to restrict voting rights to their ‘hearts’ content is ok but no, let’s worry about ‘free speech’ and a gay person’s right to a website…geez…..come on !!!!!