It Is Time To Get Out The Dice Again.

It is time for another crap shoot.

There is another LGBTQ+ case going to the Supreme Court and how they will rule is anyone’s guess. Our human rights depend upon nine people many of whom were picked not for the knowledge of the Constitution but rather for the Christian beliefs.

Supreme Court LGBTQ+ Rights Case: What’s At Stake in 303 Creative v. Elenis

The case may deliver a substantial blow to the civil rights and liberties of same-sex couples.

Teen Vouge

By Catherine Caruso

May 1, 2023

The US Supreme Court has played an important role in a number of major civil rights victories for LGBTQ+ Americans over the years. In the last few decades, the court has eliminated sodomy laws, gutted the Defence of Marriage Act (DOMA), legalized marriage equality, and established workplace nondiscrimination protections for queer and trans people. However, the Court’s latest LGBTQ+ rights case, 303 Creative v. Elenis, may deliver a substantial blow to the civil rights and liberties of same-sex couples and the greater LGBTQ+ community.

The case concerns Lorie Smith, a Colorado-based graphic designer and owner of the web design firm 303 Creative, who refuses to create wedding websites for LGBTQ+ couples, citing her deeply held religious beliefs. Smith is seeking an exemption from a Colorado law that prohibits discrimination in public accommodations on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity. Smith is arguing that being forced to comply with this law would infringe on her First Amendment rights by compelling her to use her art to convey a “message” she finds objectionable. She’s being represented by the Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF), an organization that the Southern Poverty Law Center has labeled an anti-LGBTQ hate group. (ADF disputes that label.) For nearly three decades, the ADF has been associated with legal efforts to allow businesses to deny goods and services to LGBTQ+ people, among other homophobic policies. 

This is not another Masterpiece Cakeshop case, in that case the Colorado human rights commission made a mistake and brought religion in to the discussion but in this case they avoided the religion pitfall.

The oddest part about this case is that it’s based entirely on something that has not yet occurred: Smith’s company does not currently offer wedding website designs, nor has she turned away any same-sex couples seeking this service. Unlike most Supreme Court cases dealing with nondiscrimination protections, there are no specific aggrieved individuals in this case. Instead, lawyers at the ADF have preemptively filed a lawsuit against the state of Colorado on Smith’s behalf in order to directly challenge and undermine this law.

This case is just about the question, can a person or business refuse to serve a person of a protected class because because of their religious beliefs?

Now, however, the central question the Court will need to decide is “whether applying a public-accommodation law to compel an artist to speak or stay silent violates the free speech clause of the First Amendment," according to SCOTUSblog. 

Based on some of the comments made during oral arguments in December, the Court’s conservative majority seems poised to vote in favor of Smith. According to Pizer, Justice Samuel Alito’s line of questioning revealed a disconcerting level of apathy for victims of anti-LGBTQ+ discrimination. For example, Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson brought up an analogy, replacing sexual orientation with race, in which a mall Santa refused to take pictures with Black children because the pictures offered were “sepia-toned” and nostalgic and so refusing to have the children in the photo would be adhering to historical accuracy. Alito raised an alternate hypothetical involving forcing a Black mall Santa to take pictures with a child wearing a KKK costume.

This case is big!

It can strip every state non-discrimination in the nation! It would allow a store owner to discriminate against an unmarried mother.  It would allow a store owner to discriminate against a Jew or a Muslim.  It would allow an apartment owner to refuse to rent to a Black person.

At the end of the day, the implications of this case will depend entirely on the breadth of the Supreme Court ruling. The justices can either decide to rule narrowly again, as they did in Masterpiece Cakeshop, or hand down a decision that is much broader in scope. “They could just say, ‘We're only applying this to websites,’ and so the immediate impact might be small and not felt, but there certainly will be more challenges that will go out of it,” Kreis said. “Or the justices could have a very broad and sweeping ruling, which would almost immediately have that kind of profound impact, which would still be harmful and consequential for folks in those public spaces.”

Kreis is hopeful that the justices will deliver a narrower verdict. “When it comes to this idea of pinning gay rights against religious folks' rights, this is not a Court that's going to look on LGBTQ+ people with a sense of sympathy,” he said. “I don't think there's any chance that this will come out in Colorado's favor. It's just a matter of how small or big the loss will be.”

Depending upon the out come of the case all a person would have to do to discriminate against another person is to say the magic words, a kind of “Get out of jail free” card, “It is against my religion belief.”