“The suit centers on Lorie Smith, a website designer who does not want to provide her services for gay weddings because of her religious objections.

In 2016, she says, a gay man named Stewart requested her services for help with his upcoming wedding. “We are getting married early next year and would love some design work done for our invites, placenames etc. We might also stretch to a website,” reads a message he apparently sent her through her website. In court filings, her lawyers produced a copy of the inquiry.

Web designer’s US supreme court case could trample LGBTQ+ rights, advocates say

But Stewart, who requested his last name be withheld for privacy, said in an interview with the Guardian that he never sent the message, even though it correctly lists his email address and telephone number. He has also been happily married to a woman for the last 15 years, he said. The news was first reported by the New Republic.

In fact, until he received a call this week from a reporter from the magazine, Stewart said he had no idea he was somehow tied up in a case that had made it to the supreme court.

“I can confirm I did not contact 303 Creative about a website,” he said. “It’s fraudulent insomuch as someone is pretending to be me and looking to marry someone called Mike. That’s not me.

“What’s most concerning to me is that this is kind of like the one main piece of evidence that’s been part of this case for the last six-plus years and it’s false,” he added. “Nobody’s checked it. Anybody can pick up the phone, write an email, send a text, to verify whether that was correct information.”

Key document may be fake in LGBTQ+ rights case before US Supreme Court, The Guardian, by Sam Levine

Well fuck

Lets note that the a lot of the anti-trans bills that have been shot down were shot down for being discriminatory and if this case sets precedent that discrimination against queer people is okay. We’re fucked

The case of an evangelical Christian designer from Colorado who refuses to build websites for same-sex couples lands in the U.S. Supreme Court Monday for oral arguments.

Why It Matters: For the second time in five years, a First Amendment case from Colorado pits religious freedom against the right of LGBTQ people to access services without discrimination, and puts the court in the middle of the nation's culture wars.

What To Know: Littleton's Lorie Smith, 38, objects to Colorado's Anti-Discrimination Act, saying it violates her free speech rights because it forces her to publish messages she opposes, in this case celebrating same-sex marriage on a wedding website. She preemptively sued the state in 2019.

• The law bans businesses open to the public from denying goods or services based on race, gender, sexual orientation, religion and other characteristics.

What She's Saying: "Colorado is compelling and censoring my speech and forcing me to design and create custom artwork that celebrates messages that go against my deeply held beliefs," Smith told Reuters in a recent interview. "My faith is at the core of who I am."

Between The Lines: The Denver-based 10th Circuit Court of Appeals in 2021 issued a divided ruling against Smith, siding with Colorado in deciding the law doesn't violate the First Amendment.

• Smith — backed by the conservative religious group Alliance Defending Freedom — appealed to the Supreme Court.

The Other Side: Colorado Attorney General Phil Weiser says the nation's highest court has ruled in favor of state-level anti-discrimination laws and he will emphasize that precedent. The Biden administration and LGBTQ advocacy organizations are backing Colorado.

• “When a business says we're open to the public, that means they have to serve all members of the public," Weiser said in August, when he filed briefs with the court.

Flashback: In 2018, the Supreme Court ruled in favor of Colorado baker Jack Phillips, who refused to make a cake for a gay couple. But the narrowly applied ruling avoided the broader question of whether businesses can discriminate and be protected by the First Amendment.

What's Next: A ruling in 303 Creative LLC v. Elenis is expected by the end of June.

Okay, Stop.

I really hate some of the alarmist takes I've been hearing based on the Supreme Court's decision in 303 Creative LLC v. Elenis. While it certainly isn't a good decision, it's not the second coming of "separate but equal," as one journalist claimed. I really wish I could slap those people in the face and tell them to get a hold of themselves. Since I can't do that, I will give out two facts:

Only a small handful of companies so far are affected by this ruling, according to many legal experts on the left.

While this ruling could be used against other marginalized groups besides LGBTQ+ people, so far, it has not.

Instead of being all doom-and-gloom about it, we should talk about making sure this ruling doesn't go as far as some people think it might, through both litigation and legislative workarounds. If we don't want the sky to fall, then we need to start holding it up rather than cry about it.

By the way, just in case you were wondering, here are a couple of the alarmist articles I've been reading:

While things certainly could end up the way these articles imagine, these things haven't happened...yet. And we can make sure they don't, in the ways I mentioned above! Don't get too worked up about it yet, America! We still have ways of stopping this before it gets worse!

i’m so glad everything we hold dear regarding discrimination protections in America may be stripped away because of some whiny bigot’s fictional gay couple. fucking hooray.

SCOTUS Petitions and Cases I’m Awaiting

Which cases and petitions in the upcoming SCOTUS Term are garnering the most attention? I go through several cases to look out for in this post.

The main mechanism by which parties send their cases to the Supreme Court for review is by cert petitions. With around 8,000 petitions each year from which the justices choose around 60-70 to hear on oral argument, the Court needs to find ways to quickly determine the most worthy cases. One of the ways the Court does this is through what is known as “cue theory” where the justices look for…

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no offense, you shithead, but this reads to me like this jackass doesn't have standing and you shouldn't be ruling on this absolute bullshit

When I tell people we should consider discriminating against straight people on the basis of religion:

Around the country, there has been a backlash to the movement for liberty and equality for gender and sexual minorities. New forms of inclusion have been met with reactionary exclusion. This is heartbreaking. Sadly, it is also familiar. When the civil rights and women’s rights movements sought equality in public life, some public establishments refused. Some even claimed, based on sincere religious beliefs, constitutional rights to discriminate. The brave Justices who once sat on this Court decisively rejected those claims.

Now the Court faces a similar test. A business open to the public seeks to deny gay and lesbian customers the full and equal enjoyment of its services based on the owner’s religious belief that same-sex marriages are “false.” The business argues, and a majority of the Court agrees, that because the business offers services that are customized and expressive, the Free Speech Clause of the First Amendment shields the business from a generally applicable law that prohibits discrimination in the sale of publicly available goods and services. That is wrong. Profoundly wrong. As I will explain, the law in question targets conduct, not speech, for regulation, and the act of discrimination has never constituted protected expression under the First Amendment. Our Constitution contains no right to refuse service to a disfavored group. I dissent.

– Justice Sonia Sotomayor in her dissent to the decision by the Republican majority on the US Supreme Court in the 303 CREATIVE LLC et al. v. ELENIS et al. case which allows certain businesses to discriminate against the LGBTQ+ community. Via the Supreme Court of the United States.

Sotomayor dissents after SCOTUS underlines protections for LGBTQ+ people: 'a sad day in American constitutional law'

Elections have consequences. Voting for idiotic third parties which have ZERO chance of electing a president gave us George W. Bush (who appointed John Roberts and Samuel Alito) and Donald Trump (who appointed Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh, and Amy Coney Barrett). Republicans have Ralph Nader and Jill Stein to thank for the 21st century legal lurch to the far right in the US.

Whatever you think of Al Gore or Hillary Clinton, the worst judge either of them would have appointed would have been exponentially better than the best judge appointed by Bush or Trump.

You are not a true progressive if your actions (or inactions) help to elect rightwing presidents who then appoint rightwing SCOTUS justices who sit on the court for life.

With the landmark ruling — which falls in line with many of the SCOTUS justices' conservative stances — a precedent has now been set that in certain instances, U.S. businesses can legally deny their services to LGBTQ+ people under the First Amendment.

A final fuck you to the LGBTQ community at the end of Pride Month, courtesy of the Supreme Court.

A professional photographer is generally free to choose her subjects. She can make a living taking photos of flowers or celebrities. The State does not regulate that choice. If the photographer opens a portrait photography business to the public, however, the business may not deny to any person, because of race, sex, national origin, or other protected characteristic, the full and equal enjoyment of whatever services the business chooses to offer. That is so even though portrait photography services are customized and expressive. If the business offers school photos, it may not deny those services to multiracial children because the owner does not want to create any speech indicating that interracial couples are acceptable. If the business offers corporate headshots, it may not deny those services to women because the owner believes a woman’s place is in the home. And if the business offers passport photos, it may not deny those services to Mexican Americans because the owner opposes immigration from Mexico. The same is true for sexual-orientation discrimination. If a photographer opens a photo booth outside of city hall and offers to sell newlywed photos captioned with the words “Just Married,” she may not refuse to sell that service to a newlywed gay or lesbian couple, even if she believes the couple is not, in fact, just married because in her view their marriage is “false.”

--Sonia Sotomayor, dissenting in 303 Creative LLC v. Elenis

The argument the Court makes in 303 Creative, LLC v. Elenis could easily apply to the Civil Rights Act of 1964

The Supreme Court on Friday ruled in favor of a Christian graphic artist from Colorado who does not want to design wedding websites for same-sex couples, finding the First Amendment prohibits the state from forcing the designer to express messages that are contrary to her closely held religious beliefs.

The Court ruled 6-3 in favor of the designer, Lorie Smith. All six conservative Justices sided with the designer, while the Court's three liberals dissented. Justice Neil Gorsuch delivered the majority opinion.

"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," Gorsuch wrote.

"If she 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. "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 — the second time she has done so this term.

"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.

The decision from the Justices is the latest in a string of successes for religious organizations and individuals who have sought relief from the high court and its conservative majority. It also resolves a lingering question, left unanswered since 2018, of whether states can compel artists to express messages that go against their religious beliefs in applying their public-accommodation laws.

The Supreme Court has now said states cannot, as forcing artists to create speech would violate their free speech rights.

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 anti-discrimination 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.

I have some exciting news to share with anyone who's concerned about the recent Supreme Court ruling, 303 Creative LLC v. Elenis. Although things may not seem very good right now, there is a solution. Read this article for more information (and don't look at what I write afterwards until you're finished):

With this, we may have a way to nip what the Supreme Court has done in the bud. I encourage everyone to convince their local congresspeople to pass the additions to anti-discrimination law described in the article, and to make sure that it soon gets passed federally as well.