Josh Hawley's Wife Faces Calls to Be Sanctioned Over Supreme Court Case
Josh Hawley, is facing calls to be sanctioned after it was reported that a man named in the Supreme Court's ruling in a case affecting LGBTQ rights says he had nothing to do with it.On Friday, the court ruled 6-3 in favor of Lorie Smith, stating she can refuse to design websites for same-sex weddings, despite a Colorado law that bars discrimination based on sexual orientation, race, gender, and other characteristics.Smith and her attorneys from the conservative Christian legal advocacy group Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF) filed her initial case to Colorado district court in 2016, arguing that the state's anti-discrimination law prevented her from including a message on the website for her company that stated she would not create wedding websites for gay couples.The request was not the basis for the lawsuit filed preemptively by Smith before she started making wedding websites.But as the case advanced, Smith said that she had received an inquiry in September 2016 from a same-sex couple—Stewart and Mike—to build a wedding website after lawyers for the state of Colorado pressed Smith on whether she had sufficient grounds to sue.Smith named Stewart—and included a website service request from him that listed his phone number and email address—in court documents in 2017.But Stewart, who did not give his last name, has now said he was unaware his name was invoked in the lawsuit until he was contacted last week by a reporter from The New Republic.
He denied making the request to The New Republic, The Associated Press, and The Washington Post."I was incredibly surprised given the fact that I've been happily married to a woman for the last 15 years," he told AP.
