Supreme Court Says LGBTQ+ Discrimination Is OK

The Supreme Court has determined that a business can refuse to serve someone simply because they are LGBTQ+.

The nation's highest court sided with a web designer in 303 Creative, Inc. v. Elenis, who argued that making websites for queer weddings would violate her religious beliefs, and therefore her First Amendment rights.

Except, no LGBTQ+ customer asked her to make a website for their wedding — in fact, she had never made a website for a wedding at all.

Despite this, the court determined in a 6-3 decision that an anti-discrimination law in Colorado, which included protections for LGBTQ+ people, does not apply to services that are “expressive,” “artistic,” and “customized."

Falling along party lines, conservative Supreme Court justices wrote that "the First Amendment prohibits Colorado from forcing a website designer to create expressive designs speaking messages with which the designer disagrees."

The case was actually brought on Smith's behalf by the same conservative group -- the Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF) -- that brought the 2018 case Masterpiece Cakeshop v. Colorado in which a Colorado baker refused to make a cake for a queer wedding. The court at the time ruled 7-2 in favor of the baker.

The ADF is a group dubbed a “Christian legal army” by its founder, which has a long history of opposing civil rights protections for LGBTQ+ people. The Southern Poverty Law Center categorizes it as an anti-LGBTQ+ hate group.

The nonprofit writes that the ADF is "a legal advocacy and training group that has supported the recriminalization of sexual acts between consenting LGBTQ+ adults in the U.S. and criminalization abroad; has defended state-sanctioned sterilization of trans people abroad; has contended that LGBTQ people are more likely to engage in pedophilia; and claims that a 'homosexual agenda' will destroy Christianity and society."

The beliefs of one woman and a hate group have now set a precedent that U.S. businesses can legally deny their services to LGBTQ+ people under the First Amendment.

Liberal Justice Sonia Sotomayor penned the dissenting opinion, joined by liberal Justices Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson. They wrote: "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."