Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch offered a blistering majority opinion on a contentious case about freedom of religion, savagely criticizing his colleague Justice Sonia Sotomayor and her dissent on the controversial case.
The case — 303 Creative LLC v. Elenis — dealt with a Christian web designer who refused to design websites for same-s*x weddings, citing his religious values against homos*xual relationships.
Sotomayor, joined by Justices Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson, dissented the majority opinion, stating it granted businesses the unprecedented constitutional right to deny service to a protected class. The typically mild-mannered and moderate Gorsuch, however, was quick to counter, highlighting discrepancies in Sotomayor’s dissent with an uncharacteristically severe opinion.
“In some places, the dissent gets so turned around about the facts that it opens fire on its own position,” Gorsuch wrote. “For instance: While stressing that a Colorado company cannot refuse ‘the full and equal enjoyment of [its] services’ based on a customer’s protected status,’ the dissent assures us that a company selling creative services ‘to the public’ does have a right ‘to decide what messages to include or not to include.’ But if that is true, what are we even debating? Instead of addressing the parties’ stipulations about the case actually before us, the dissent spends much of its time adrift on a sea of hypotheticals about photographers, stationers, and others, asking if they too provide expressive services covered by the First Amendment.”
In the center of the storm was Lorie Smith, the plaintiff, who challenged Colorado’s laws in 2016. Smith contended that being required to create a website for a same-s*x wedding violated her religious beliefs and infringed on her First Amendment rights — freedom of speech. Gorsuch supported Smith’s argument, emphasizing that the state cannot compel someone to abandon their conscience and echo its preferred message.
Gorsuch further critiqued Sotomayor’s dissent, accusing his fellow justice of misrepresenting the facts of the case.
“When the dissent finally gets around to that question — more than halfway into its opinion — it reimagines the facts of this case from top to bottom,” Gorsuch wrote. “The dissent claims that Colorado wishes to regulate Ms. Smith’s ‘conduct,’ not her speech … The dissent chides us for deciding a pre-enforcement challenge … The dissent suggests (over and over again) that any burden on speech here is ‘incidental.’ All despite the Tenth Circuit’s finding that Colorado intends to force Ms. Smith to convey a message she does not believe with the ‘very purpose’ of ‘[e]liminating … ideas’ that differ from its own.’”
Lastly, Gorsuch refuted the dissent’s assertion that his ruling had granted businesses the right to refuse service to a protected class for the first time in history. He clarified that Smith was still legally obligated to work with anyone, irrespective of their s*xual orientation. He also pointed out that the dissent’s stance would compel the court to take an unprecedented step — forcing an individual to voice beliefs contrary to their personal convictions.
