Minnesotans react to Supreme Court ruling over LGBTQ rights: "It's legal, codified discrimination"
MINNEAPOLIS -- Another day, another seismic decision from the Supreme Court of the United States.
In a ruling released Friday, the 6-3 conservative majority affirmed the rights of a Christian website and graphic designer in Colorado to tell her clients she won't build wedding websites for same-sex couples. In the case known as 303 Creative LLC v. Elenis, the court stated the First Amendment supersedes a Colorado public accommodations law.
"The First Amendment envisions the United States as a rich and complex place where all persons are free to think and speak as they wish, not as the government demands," Justice Neil Gorsuch wrote for the majority. "If [Smith] wishes to speak, she must either speak as the State demands or face sanctions for expressing her own beliefs, sanctions that may include compulsory participation in 'remedial ... training,' filing periodic compliance reports as officials deem necessary, and paying monetary fines," he said, referencing the penalties for violating Colorado's public accommodations law. "Under our precedents, that 'is enough,' more than enough, to represent an impermissible abridgment of the First Amendment's right to speak freely."
Justice Sonia Sotomayor read her dissenting opinion, joined by Justices Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson, from the bench — a relatively rare act meant to underscore deep disagreement with the majority.
"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.
Indeed, the case that originated in Colorado and decided in D.C. quickly reverberated in Minnesota.
"It's shocking, it's a disgrace," Finn Jones, of south Minneapolis, said. "I am queer and I know a lot of queer people in my life who don't deserve treatment like this. It's just legal, codified discrimination now. This is going to be used as precedent for decades."
Legal experts in the state were also trying to decipher what the decision meant for the present and the future.
"The majority really stresses that this was a custom service - she's providing custom wedding websites for each individual couple. Will this same precedent apply to services that are more off the shelf," Jill Hasday, a University of Minnesota Law School professor, said. "I go to an ice cream store, I'm a same-sex couple, the owner objects and doesn't want his couple walking around with their ice cream cones. Will that count as protected speech?"
According to Hasday, the key dispute among the conservative and liberal justices was whether the graphic designer's case was about speech or about conduct.
"So the key move the majority makes is this is regulating what she can say. The dissent says no, it's not regulating what she can say. It's regulating what she can do. She has a generally open business and can't discriminate and exclude some customers," she said. "So for instance, I don't think this case clearly says I have a religious objection to same-sex marriage. I'm a restaurant owner. Same sex couple walks in, I can ban them from the restaurant. I think that would be an overreading of the case."
Hasday added that despite some potential ambiguity, there's near certainty the Court will come back to this issue again.
"Some people have called this 'the you only live once court,' you know. They're going for broke. They have the votes and they're not shy."
Smith's religious objection to same-sex weddings
The case was brought by Smith, who said her Christian beliefs prevent her from creating custom websites for same-sex weddings. Smith started her web design business, 303 Creative, roughly a decade ago, and wants to expand to create websites for weddings. In addition to wanting to design websites to express God's "design for marriage as a long-long union between one man and one woman," Smith also wants to post a message explaining why she cannot make custom websites for same-sex weddings, which states that doing so compromises her Christian beliefs and tells "a story about marriage that contradicts God's true story of marriage."
But refusing to design custom websites for a same-sex wedding, and detailing why she plans to do so, could violate Colorado's public-accommodation law.
The state's law prohibits businesses open to the public from refusing service because of sexual orientation and announcing their intent to do so. Smith has not yet created any wedding websites or been asked to do so for a same-sex wedding, but argues Colorado's law violates her free speech rights since the state is forcing her to express a message she disagrees with.
Smith filed a lawsuit against the state, but lost in the lower courts. A federal appeals court said that while her wedding websites are "pure speech," the state had a compelling interest in ensuring access to her services.
Smith appealed to the Supreme Court, and the justices considered during oral arguments in December whether states like Colorado can, in applying their public accommodations laws, compel an artist to express a message they disagree with.
The latest Supreme Court dispute over LGBTQ rights
The dispute was one of several to land before the justices in the wake of its 2015 landmark decision establishing the right to same-sex marriage that raised the question of whether a business owner can refuse service to LGBTQ customers because of their religious beliefs.
In 2018, the high court sided with a Colorado baker who was sued after he refused to bake a cake for a same-sex wedding, but did not address whether a business can deny services to LGBTQ peple. Instead, the Supreme Court said the state's Civil Rights Commission was hostile to baker Jack Phillips' religious beliefs in violation of the First Amendment.
In the years after, the Supreme Court declined to clarify whether states could force religious business owners to create messages that violate their conscience. But the court's rightward shift, solidified by former President Donald Trump's appointment of three justices, raised concerns that the Supreme Court would erode LGBTQ rights by allowing businesses to deny services to LGBTQ customers.
President Biden on Friday criticized the court's ruling and said he is concerned it could lead to discrimination against LGBTQ Americans.
"In America, no person should face discrimination simply because of who they are or who they love," the president said in a statement. "The Supreme Court's disappointing decision in 303 Creative LLC v. Elenis undermines that basic truth, and painfully it comes during Pride month when millions of Americans across the country join together to celebrate the contributions, resilience, and strength of the LGBTQI+ community."