Supreme Court Rejoins Debate Over Business and Same-Sex Weddings

The U.S. Supreme Court agreed to rejoin a divisive debate over gay and speech rights, accepting an appeal from a Colorado website designer who says she won’t create pages for same-sex weddings.

Lorie Smith contends Colorado is violating her First Amendment protections with a law that bars businesses from discriminating on the basis of sexual orientation and other factors. A federal appeals court ruled against her.

The case could resolve some of the issues the court ducked in 2018 when it considered the Colorado law in a clash over a baker who refused to make cakes for gay weddings. The court sided with the baker on narrow grounds while sidestepping larger questions about whether and when business owners can turn away customers.

The justices indicated the new case will center on the Constitution’s free-speech guarantee, not the religious rights that Smith is also contending were violated. The court will hear the case during the nine-month term that starts in October.

Smith says she wants to expand her design business and start creating websites for weddings. She says the Colorado law would force her to convey messages that violate her faith and even bar her from posting an online statement explaining her beliefs.

In her appeal, she said the lower court ruling “empowers the government to force everyone to speak government-approved messages and subverts our core understandings of the First Amendment.”

Colorado officials urged the Supreme Court not to hear the appeal, saying Smith hadn’t shown any credible threat of enforcement. State officials led by Attorney General Philip Weiser contend that the Supreme Court has consistently upheld laws barring discrimination by companies that provide goods and services to the public.

“The anti-discrimination law is a straightforward regulation of commercial conduct,” Weiser argued.

In the earlier case, the Supreme Court said Colorado officials had shown unconstitutional hostility toward the baker’s religion. The Supreme Court’s composition has changed significantly since then, with Justices Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett succeeding Justices Anthony Kennedy and Ruth Bader Ginsburg, both of whom championed gay rights.

The case is 303 Creative v. Elenis, 21-476.

(Updates with excerpts from court filings starting in sixth paragraph.)

To contact the reporter on this story:
Greg Stohr in Washington at gstohr@bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story:
Elizabeth Wasserman at ewasserman2@bloomberg.net

Greg Stohr

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