The Supreme Court issued two more fantastic rulings yesterday. National Review ran the first story headlined, “A Supreme Court Victory for Creators of All Kinds.”
In /303 Creative LLC v. Elenis/, the Supreme Court ruled 6-3 that a creator of wedding websites can legally refuse to design websites for same-sex couples, finding that website design was an artistic act and the equivalent of protected First Amendment speech.
Plaintiff Lori Smith lives in Colorado, which has a law requiring artists to provide services to anyone and anything regardless of the artist’s personal beliefs. Under Colorado law, if the demon Baphomet himself clumped into the store on his iron-shod hooves, Lori would either have to make the devil a Satanic website or face prosecution by a hostile swarm of insectile bureaucrats and regulators angrily boiling out of a bottomless pit somewhere deep under the Denver airport.
Ominously, Lori had lost at the Circuit Court of Appeals, which came up with the novel idea that, since every artist’s work is unique, Lori actually has a “monopoly” on her own special style of website design, and therefore LGBTQ people have NO OTHER REASONABLE OPTIONS for website design. So, sorry, Lori. Get behind the LGBTQ revolution, or else.
But on appeal, the Supreme Court wasn’t having any of it, and said:
In some sense, of course, [Lori’s] voice is unique; so is everyone’s. But that hardly means a State may coopt an individual’s voice for its own purposes. . . . Were the rule otherwise, the better the artist, the finer the writer, the more unique his talent, the more easily his voice could be conscripted to disseminate the government’s preferred messages. That would not respect the First Amendment; more nearly, it would spell its demise.
Outstanding Justice Gorsuch, who wrote the excellent opinion for the majority, also tellingly quoted George Orwell:
“If liberty means anything at all, it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear.”
Indeed. We can all learn a lesson from that.
The decision naturally extends to cake bakers, wedding planners, and perhaps most importantly, pastors. If you’ve been following the trials and travels of Jack Phillips and Masterpiece Cakeshop in Colorado, well, because of this decision, Jack’s never-ending nightmare is now over.
Finally!
Two more blockbuster Supreme Court decisions; Ukraine's secret CIA deal to end the war; more Brits de-banked; NYC installs drug paraphernalia vending machines; SADS cancers and mystery deaths; more.
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