Supreme Court Accepts Groundbreaking LGBTQ Case

The Supreme Court has agreed to hear a case involving religion and the rights of LGBTQ people later this year. 

The high court said they will hear the case of a Christian web designer, Lorie Smith, who sued the state of Colorado for banning businesses from discriminating on the basis of sexual orientation because she doesn’t want to make wedding websites for same-gender couples. 

Smith—who has a company named 303 Creative LLC–wants to expand her graphic and web design services to wedding web services, but she says that her religion beliefs would lead her to decline any request from same-gender couples.

She also wants to post a statement on her website about her beliefs, but by doing so, she challenges Colorado’s anti-discrimination law on free speech grounds, and argues that the law violates her free speech and religious rights. 

The Colorado Anti-Discrimination Act doesn’t not allow a company to publish any communication that indicates that a public accommodation service will be refused based on sexual orientation.

 As reported by The Denver Post, the Supreme Court said in taking the case; however, that it would look only at the free speech issue. It said it would decide whether a law that requires an artist to speak or stay silent violates the free speech clause of the First Amendment.  

Last year, the U.S. Court ruled against Smith, a three-judge panel of the 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals denied Smith’s attempt to overturn a lower court ruling throwing out her legal challenge. The panel said Colorado had a compelling interest in protecting the “dignity interests”  of members of marginalized groups through the Anti-Discrimination Act.

But what does all of this mean for the LGBTQ community? It means that the case will allow the justices to directly confront the tension between state anti-LGBTQ discrimination laws and claims of religious liberty.