Supreme Court Balances Anti-Discrimination Laws with Expressive Freedom Protections

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The Supreme Court rules in 303 Creative LLC v. Elenis that the First Amendment bars Colorado from forcing a website designer to create expressive designs speaking messages with which the designer disagrees.
The majority ruling was based on First Amendment free speech grounds.
The progressive media, LGBTQ+ activist fundraising lobbies, and Democratic party politicos claim that the ruling is a frontal attack on LGBTQ+ rights and allows businesses to discriminate against LGBTQ+ clients. But the ruling does not permit businesses to refuse LGBTQ+ customers overall; it’s clearly targeted at allowing providers to refuse requests for services that involve the creation of explicit communications that violate the provider’s beliefs.
It is often necessary to balance conflicting rights. LGBTQ+ activists and Democratic party officials want to use the state to force small business owners to engage in expressive activity that violates their religious or otherwise deeply held beliefs. The court rightly told them to desist.
(Edited to clarify that the decision was based on freedom of speech, not religious freedom, grounds.)

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12 Comments for “Supreme Court Balances Anti-Discrimination Laws with Expressive Freedom Protections”

  1. posted by Kosh III on

    Unsurpisingly, it didn’t take the homocons much time to rush to support their oppressors. Stockholm Syndrome anyone??

    • posted by Agee on

      Kosh III, other than spewing your usual insult bile, do you have an argument against the many points made in the post about free speech protections that you’d be capable of expressing?

      • posted by Kosh III on

        Equal means equal.
        This opens the way to allow discrimination, not just for gay folks, but now one can put up a sign that says “no fags” No niggers” no “Jews” even–gasp, “no avowed Christians).
        This court and the GOP/radicals wants to turn back the clock to 1950; or is it 1850?

        • posted by Agee on

          Kosh, no point really in responding since facts don’t matter to you. But I do wonder how many fact-based analyses it would take, if you bothered to read them, to show that this decision protects everyone’s right not to be forced by the state to express opinions they disagree with, and otherwise has nothing to do with allowing discrimination against people in protected classes?

  2. posted by Edward on

    So, does this mean that the court will now uphold the first amendment right of citizens to run for public office?

  3. posted by Tom Scharbach on

    A quiet note:

    (1) The Court’s holding was based on a straight-up, relatively simple, uncluttered free speech analysis, as was the Carpenter/Volokh/Shapiro brief cited in the post. The fact that Smith’s objections were religion-based is irrelevant to the Court’s analysis, holding and opinion.

    (2) The Court did not limit the holding to cases of religious belief or religious conscience. The Court’s opinion did not discuss the issue of “religious freedom” at all. Smith’s refusal could have been based on anything at all, including upfront bigotry.

    (3) The Court did not “balance” the right to free speech against the goals/purpose of anti-discrimination laws. The Court outright rejected the right of the government to compel private speech, no matter how compelling the government’s interest in doing so.

    I agree with the majority opinion. I would not have agreed with the majority opinion had the Court limited the holding to matters of religious conscience.

    • posted by Jorge on

      Tom Scharbach: …I agree with the majority opinion.

      WOW!

      I haven’t read it yet (I was reading the ICWA decision), though I expect to by the end of next week.

      (3) The Court did not “balance” the right to free speech against the goals/purpose of anti-discrimination laws. The Court outright rejected the right of the government to compel private speech, no matter how compelling the government’s interest in doing so.

      Is that so? I’ll have to read it.

  4. posted by Jim Michaud on

    The thing that bothers me most about this ruling is that Ms. Smith had no standing to bring this to court. NOTHING happened to her. I’m beginning to see a pattern here: abortion is settled law-until it’s not. Affirmative action in college admissions is settled law-until it’s not. We’ve had two successive years now where decades old precedent has been overturned. Roe (1973) last year and Bakke (1978) this year. The one guardrail of Obergefell is the issue of standing. Apparently, now standing doesn’t even matter anymore (per Ms. Smith). That guardrail has been washed away now. So how can right wingers assure me (and millions of now frightened gay couples) that their marriages are secure and won’t be dissolved?

    • posted by Agee on

      I really don’t understand how gay people can claim that settled constitutional law based on prior Supreme Court decisions should not be revisited — upholding sodomy statutes was settled law, until it wasn’t. Finding that the Civil Rights Act did not protect gays and trans people from employment discrimination was settled law, until it wasn’t.
      I also fail to understand how protecting everyone’s right not to be forced by the state to express beliefs that they don’t agree with is an attack on gay people or any other minority. Liberals once supported free speech, and freedom from coerced speech. It’s a sign of how authoritarian progressives have become that this is even an issue.
      As for the business owner’s standing to challenge the law, which Colorado has explicitly said requires businesses like hers to create messages for same-sex weddings, from what I’ve read the claims of lack of standing in this case were not convincing.

      • posted by Jim Michaud on

        My apologies Agee. I neglected to read Tom Scharbach’s excellent analysis before going off. I feel better about the ruling now.

    • posted by Jorge on

      Affirmative action in college admissions is settled law-until it’s not.

      Based on the abstract (another decision on my bucket list to read) the majority made much of the statement in the 2003 case that the majority expects that the need for affirmative action will end in 25 years. It alleged a precedent that at some point affirmative action programs must “end”. Evidently Justice Thomas’s concurrence in part (“I agree its constitutionality will end in 25 years, because it is unconstitutional right now”) was more than a troll.

  5. posted by Edward TJ Brown on

    I wonder if Affirmative Action can exist if its based on class, as opposed to race?

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