There are several problems with the SCOTUS Lorie Smith decision.
Smith objects to the possibility that if she were to expand her graphic design business to include wedding website design, she might be hired to create a wedding website for a gay couple, and refusing to do that work would violate Colorado civil rights legislation.
She argued that being hired to design a gay wedding website — which could potentially happen — would be an infringement on HER free speech rights.
She objects to the possibility of this so much that she brought suit.
Important point: She didn’t and doesn’t have a wedding website design business. She brought her suit when she was only thinking about starting a wedding website design business.
She has NOT been asked by any gay couple to create a wedding website.
Smith was objecting in advance, because of the unlikely possibility she might be asked by a gay couple to create a wedding website.
Now, I have no interest in giving money to someone who does not want to do business with me.
However, here is why she and the 6 SCOTUS justices who sided with her are completely wrong:
If she were paid by a gay couple to produce a website, and she created a wedding website for that gay couple, the website would NOT contain HER speech.
It would contain the speech of the gay couple, not hers.
Her name would not be on the website. No one would know that she had anything to do with the web site.
If a freelance speechwriter, David, who might be hired to write a speech for President Biden, objected to writing a speech in favor of a piece of legislation that David disagreed with, would David voice his objection by bringing a lawsuit, because he thought that the speech he might he hired and paid to write would be “his”?
No, David the freelance speechwriter would not bring suit because of something that might happen.
The speech he might write would not be “David’s speech.” The beliefs expressed in it would never be attached to David. It would be “President Biden’s speech.”
Smith’s objection to potentially, maybe being hired to create a website for a gay couple is no different than a restaurant owner saying he won’t cook food for and serve a gay couple, because he thinks being paid to cook and have food served in his restaurant is an expression of his “speech.”
No.
Apparently potential website designer Smith would not object to being asked to create websites for the leader of an organized crime organization, the Ku Klux Klan, or for any other person or group whose views, position and opinions others — or she — might not agree with.
She only objects — before ever being asked — to possibly, potentially, maybe being hired to create a wedding website for a gay couple.
One more important legal thing: Smith had NO legal standing to bring suit because no one had asked her to design a gay wedding website.
The clear lack of standing means that SCOTUS should never have agreed to hear this case.
SCOTUS ruled on an imaginary thing that MIGHT happen some day.
SCOTUS ruled on fiction, and created a real, precedent-setting legal decision that will govern people’s real behavior based on imagined events that have not happened.
SCOTUS now rules on hypotheticals.
This is the SCOTUS we have now, thanks to someone who put three justices on that bench.
SCOTUS has ruled that a business can discriminate against a legally protected class —because there is a law in Colorado that prevents businesses from refusing service to members of the LGBT community, a protected class.