LGBTQ People, Allies Lament Supreme Court’s Pro-Discrimination Ruling
LGBTQ advocates and allies are lamenting the Supreme Court’s recent decision in favor of a website designer who sought an exemption from her state’s nondiscrimination law to allow her to refuse to create wedding websites for same-sex couples.Despite one of the alleged requests for service from a gay couple allegedly being fabricated or submitted under false pretenses, as reported by The New Republic, the high court ultimately decided in favor of Lorie Smith, the owner of 303 Creative, LLC, finding that Colorado’s law infringes on her free speech rights.The court further found that, because Smith creates “custom” websites that contain “expressive content,” she should have been granted a “free speech” exemption to the Coloraod Anti-Discrimination Act allowing her to not only refuse service to same-sex couples, but to post a notice that she will refuse to create websites celebrating same-sex marriages.Many allies of the LGBTQ community noted that while the decision is not as broad as to overturn nullify laws prohibiting LGBTQ discrimination, it does create a massive carve-out for businesses providing “custom-made” goods or services, allowing them to discriminate against prospective customers — in this particular case, LGBTQ individuals, but potentially members of other groups in the future — on free speech grounds. “The Supreme Court just gave businesses a license to discriminate,” Ben Olinsky, the senior vice president of Structural Reform and Governance at the left-leaning Center for American Progress, said in a statement. “A claim of free speech cannot be used as an excuse to undermine laws that prevent discrimination in public accommodations.
