Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor argued Friday that allowing a Christian web designer to refuse to make a wedding website for a same-sex wedding could lead to companies refusing to serve interracial couples.
Sotomayor wrote a dissenting opinion for the case 303 Creative LLC v. Elenis, in which the Supreme Court ruled in a 6-3 decision that Colorado’s law would have forced Christian web designer Lorie Smith to create a website for same-sex weddings, therefore violating her First Amendment rights, according to the text. Sotomayor was joined by Justices Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson in her dissent and claimed that the decision set a dangerous precedent for discrimination against minorities, citing interracial couples as an example. (RELATED: ‘Difficult To Read’: Neil Gorsuch Ruthlessly Mocks Sotomayor’s Dissent In Free Speech Case)
“A website designer could equally refuse to create a wedding website for an interracial couple, for example,” Sotomayor wrote. “How quickly we forget that opposition to interracial marriage was often because ‘Almighty God . . . did not intend for the races to mix.'”
Web designer Lorie Smith, the plaintiff in a Supreme Court case who objects to same-sex marriage, poses for a portrait at her office in Littleton, Colorado, U.S., November 28, 2022. (REUTERS/Kevin Mohatt)
Sotomayor claimed that her fellow justices had effectively allowed Smith to create a “Straight Couples Only” sign and argued that the Smith’s rationale was used by the same people who openly discriminated against minorities, according to the text.
“The majority protests that Smith will gladly sell her goods and services to anyone, including same-sex couples,” Sotomayor wrote. “Apparently, a gay or lesbian couple might buy a wedding website for their straight friends. This logic would be amusing if it were not so embarrassing. I suppose the Heart of Atlanta Motel could have argued that Black people may still rent rooms for their white friends … [Smith], like Ollie McClung, who would serve Black people take-out but not table service, discriminates against LGBT people by offering them a limited menu.”
Jackson raised similar concerns about racial discrimination during the case’s oral arguments in December. She questioned if a hypothetical photographer doing an “It’s a Wonderful Life” theme could elect to only work with white families to be “authentic” to the film.
“I want to do video depictions of ‘It’s a Wonderful Life’ and knowing that movie very well I want to be authentic and so only white children and families can be customers for that particular product,” Jackson said. ” I’ll give to everybody else, I’ll sell them anything they want, just not ‘Its a Wonderful Life’ depictions.”
Justice Neil Gorsuch dismissed Sotomayer and Jackson’s claims, stating that nothing in the majority’s opinion could be construed to endorse “anything like the ‘straight couples only’ notices the dissent conjures out of thin air,” according to the text.
“The dissent even suggests that our decision today is akin to endorsing a ‘separate but equal’ regime that would allow law firms to refuse women admission into partnership, restaurants to deny service to Black Americans, or businesses seeking employees to post something like a ‘White Applicants Only’ sign,” Gorsuch wrote. “Instead of addressing the parties’ stipulations about the case actually before us, the dissent spends much of its time adrift on a sea of hypotheticals about photographers, stationers, and others, asking if they too provide expressive services covered by the First Amendment.”
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