WASHINGTON (CN) — The conservative and liberal factions of the Supreme Court disagreed on what message the majority sent by siding with a Colorado entrepreneur who didn’t want to make wedding websites for gay couples.
“It is difficult to read the dissent and conclude we are looking at the same case,” Justice Neil Gorsuch wrote for the 6-3 majority in 303 Creative v. Elenis.
For members of the LGBTQ community, the message is becoming all too clear as people seek to apply the high court’s ruling.
A Michigan hair salon owner understood the conservative majority to give her the freedom to ban transgender people from her business. First reported by the Kansas City Star, Studio 8 Hair Lab owner Christine Geiger announced in a Facebook post that transgender people were “not welcome” at her salon. An Instagram account connected to the salon states it “does not cater to woke ideologies.”
Down in Texas, Waco Judge Dianne Hensley is arguing that the ruling strengthens her case for refusing to perform LGBTQ weddings.
“303 Creative was interpreting the First Amendment’s Speech Clause rather than the Texas Religious Freedom Restoration Act,” Jonathan Mitchell, an attorney with Mitchell Law representing Hensley wrote in a filing. “Its holding is nonetheless instructive because it rejects the idea of a ‘compelling interest’ in forcing wedding vendors to participate in same-sex and opposite-sex marriage ceremonies on equal terms.”
Mitchell is known for his work on a Texas law that largely banned abortions in the state, prior to the overturning of Roe v. Wade last year.
The Wall Street Journal’s editorial board categorized the ruling as a win for those dissenting from “progressive orthodoxies.”
“303 Creative is a cultural tonic the country urgently needs,” the editorial board wrote. “The tolerance the left once sought for gays and gay weddings has become the coercion that forces dissenters from the dominant culture to bend the knee.”
The web designer in the Colorado case took aim at a state public accommodation laws that say any business offering a public service must serve all of the public.
Lori Smith persuaded the high court majority meanwhile to exempt her from that law because the websites she creates constitute an expression of free speech.
"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.
Gorsuch said public accommodation laws were important for protecting the civil rights of all Americans, bu they are not immune from the “demands of the Constitution.”
“When a state public accommodations law and the Constitution collide, there can be no question which must prevail,” the Trump appointee wrote.
According to Justice Sonia Sotomayor — who was joined by her two liberal colleagues in dissent — the ruling creates a constitutional right to refuse service to members of a protected class.
“By issuing this new license to discriminate in a case brought by a company that seeks to deny same-sex couples the full and equal enjoyment of its services, the immediate, symbolic effect of the decision is to mark gays and lesbians for second-class status,” Sotomayor wrote.
Gorsuch strongly disagreed with this assessment, saying the court is prohibiting only government-compelled speech. He said the dissent's interpretation would force Muslim movie directors to produce films with Zionist messages and make atheists commission murals celebrating Evangelicals.
“Perhaps the dissent finds these possibilities untroubling because it trusts state governments to coerce only ‘enlightened’ speech,” Gorsuch wrote.
For legal experts, the dichotomy between these two interpretations is not what the court said, but what it didn’t say.
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