Given the current conservative leanings of the high court and its recent decisions affirming religious freedom, this case is setting up to be an important one. It may prove to be the perfect opportunity for the high court to finally vindicate the free speech rights of Christian creative professionals whose chosen messages do not conform to the politically mandated ideology of the local governments where they operate.
When Denver-area baker Jack Phillips won his religious discrimination case against the state of Colorado at the U.S. Supreme Court in 2018 after declining to create a wedding cake for a same-sex “marriage,” the justices decided in his favor on the basis of the religious hostility exhibited by particular state officials toward his religious beliefs about marriage. The court avoided the even weightier questions of free speech that lay at the heart of the case.
Now, four years later, another creative artist is challenging the same Colorado nondiscrimination statute that ensnared Jack Phillips—as well as other wedding professionals in other states dealing with similar statutes—for compelling Christian businesspeople to express messages contrary to their faith.
Lorie Smith is the owner of 303 Creative LLC, a Denver-area graphic design and wedding website where Lorie hopes to celebrate marriages and bring her Christian faith to bear on the creative work she does in blogging about and building memories for the couples that hire her.
While she doesn’t discriminate against any customer because of who they are, she does desire to limit her wedding business to opposite-sex couples because of her Christian beliefs about marriage, and that’s something that Colorado law does not permit.
Smith’s courageous legal efforts to fight the Colorado Anti-Discrimination Act (CADA) and operate her business in accordance with her faith have not gone well to date. When she sued the state in 2019 to have the law declared unconstitutional, she lost in federal district court and again at the 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.
That didn’t discourage Smith, to her credit.
Lorie appealed the 10th Circuit’s decision to the U.S. Supreme Court, which on February 22 announced it would hear her case. The news is encouraging for those who value religious freedom, free speech, and the right of creative professionals to be free from government-compelled ideology.
Given the current conservative leanings of the high court and its recent decisions affirming religious freedom, this case is setting up to be an important one. It may prove to be the perfect opportunity for the high court to finally vindicate the free speech rights of Christian creative professionals whose chosen messages do not conform to the politically mandated ideology of the local governments where they operate.
