“What’s strange about the opinion? First of all, there is the supposed harm to the plaintiff. Smith, by her own account, is not a designer of wedding websites. She is merely an aspiring wedding-website designer who reportedly dreamed from childhood of the heterosexual wedding websites she would someday create. While one can admire the particularity of this vision, her plight pales a bit beside the counterweight of gay couples trying to plan weddings without facing discrimination. On top of that, according to the mind-blowing reporting of the New Republic’s Melissa Gira Grant, a 2016 email included in the plaintiff’s filings from a gay man asking Smith for wedding design services is apparently fake. His contact information led Gira Grant to a straight, baffled, married web designer who says he would have had no reason to contact Smith. Then there is the argument itself. A wedding website is an example of “expression,” sure — both sides agree on that. But Gorsuch, following a lower court, calls such a website “pure speech,” as if no services were being provided and the primary point of the website was to express the designer’s views on matrimony. In any case, he argues, the right of protected classes to equal treatment holds no weight before the free speech rights of expressive vendors: “When Colorado’s public accommodations law and the Constitution collide, there can be no question which must prevail.” This seems awfully odd if only because there is such an obvious comparison to interracial marriage — historically anathema to certain religious groups but not, in my lifetime, something for which vendors could legally withhold services. But maybe I was the crazy one. So I asked for help from Lewis and Clark Law School professor James M. Oleske Jr., whose 2015 article comparing religious exemptions for interracial marriage and same-sex marriage is cited by Justice Sonia Sotomayor in her dissent.”
““When they mentioned that this was a terrorist organization, I said ‘Well, then count me as a Mom for Liberty,’” Haley proclaimed to the sold-out crowd. She was met with roaring applause.”
