The Supreme Court is eyeing Colorado’s law barring businesses from discriminating against gay, lesbian or transgender people in a free-speech challenge.
The Supreme Court heard arguments Monday in a case involving a Colorado web design company whose desire to avoid doing work for same-sex weddings runs afoul of the state’s public accommodation anti-discrimination law.
Conservative justices appeared sympathetic to First Amendment arguments made by a lawyer for the design company’s owner. But liberal justices clearly feared that a ruling on her behalf would crack open the door to legalizing businesses denying goods and services not just to LGBTQ people, but also to other minority groups.
The court will likely decide the case by next spring or early summer. Conservatives hold six of the nine justice seats on the bench.
« What’s the limiting line of yours? » Justice Sonia Sotomayor asked Kristen Waggoner, the lawyer for company owner Lorie Smith, an evangelical Christian opposed to gay marriage.
« How about people who don’t believe in an interracial marriage? » asked Sotomayor, a liberal, as she sat feet away from conservative Justice Clarence Thomas, a Black man who is married to a white woman.
« Or about people who don’t believe that disabled should get married? Where’s the line? » she asked. « I choose to serve whom I want to disagree with, their personal characteristics like race or disability? I can choose not to sell to those people? »
Waggoner objected to that idea.
