Lorie Smith speaks to reporters outside of the U.S. Supreme Court in December 2022. Photo: Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images
Businesses can refuse to serve same-sex couples if doing so would violate the owners’ religious beliefs, the Supreme Court ruled on Friday.
Why it matters: The court has significantly expanded LGBTQ rights over the past several years, but is now carving out some exceptions.
Driving the news: The case concerns Lorie Smith, a Colorado web designer who wanted to create and sell wedding websites, but not to same-sex couples.
- Colorado’s civil rights law prohibited her, or any business that serves the general public, from turning away customers because of their sexual orientation. She said complying with that law would force her to espouse views she does not agree with.
- “The artwork that I create is speech,” Smith told Colorado Public Radio in December, adding that, “those messages must be consistent with my convictions.”
The big picture: The conservative-majority Supreme Court ruled 6-3 in favor of Smith, saying she has a First Amendment right to refuse to design custom wedding websites for same-sex couples.
The signs in stores when I was young also said “for any reason, at any time” …
Stores also put up lists of people who could not shop there due to bad checks or bad behavior.
I remember seeing the returned checks taped to the counter so you could see their name, address and phone number too.
It’s about time this court did something right then always ruling in favor of wicked things and being unconstitutional. The few clowns who sit on that woke court can’t read and have no understanding of the constitution which they swore an oath to defend, they actually go out of their way to destroy the constitution and what it stands for. It has been a lawless court for the longest time now. It should be changed in my eyes and replaced with only pro constitutional judges elected by a quarry of state legislatures and not the President and Senate and without any recommendations from the communist Bar association who are nothing more than a private business of scumbag lying demon-rat attorneys.
In the 90’s my daughter shoplifted some jewelry from a shop in the mall and I found it. I made her return it to the owner and apologize for taking it. She was banned from entering the store. She was mad at me but learned a lesson about stealing.
NO BUSINESS should have to do business with ANYONE they don’t wish to do business wirh. PERIOD. It should NOT take a religious justification or anything other than the recognition that a business and its assets are the OWNERS property to dispose of as THEY SEE FIT, NOT THE CRIMINAL GOVERNMENT.
Finally. Its about time.
After all these years they started actually reading the constitution! Bully for them.