Supreme Court sides with web designer who didn’t want to create pro-LGBT messages | Washington Examiner

“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,” Gorsuch added.

Gorsuch’s majority opinion was joined by the court’s Republican-appointed justices, while liberal Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan, and Ketanji Brown Jackson dissented.

“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,” Sotomayor wrote in her dissent.

The lawsuit against Colorado’s anti-discrimination law was brought by a religious business owner who sees herself as an artist and does not want to use her creative talents to express a message against her Christian beliefs.

Plaintiff Lorie Smith argued the state’s public accommodations law bars her from doing what she wants to do more than anything else create custom websites for heterosexual couples.

“Under Colorado’s logic,” Gorsuch wrote, “the government may compel anyone who speaks for pay on a given topic to accept all commissions on that same topic no matter the underlying message if the topic somehow implicates a customer’s statutorily protected trait … Taken seriously, that principle would allow the government to force all manner of artists, speechwriters, and others whose services involve speech to speak what they do not believe on pain of penalty.”

Smith celebrated the decisions through tears during a remote press conference on Friday, saying she had been subject to “harassment, constant hacking attempts, and even death threats.”

via www.washingtonexaminer.com

Freedom of speech. A beautiful concept, when you think about it.