Seems like there’s a loophole being exploited here. The court only had to hear from one plaintiff, the web designer who wanted to overturn a law. The fake person was never denied service (obviously) so didn’t have to provide testimony.
If these are the rules of the game now-- you gaff up a fake customer, for a business that doesn’t even make “wedding websites”, to force through a Supreme Court decision you want, well how do you counter that?
She didn’t even have to risk anything, it was all paid for by “Alliance Defending Freedom.” Would a Muslim-owned business risk their income (and lives) denying some Christians service to prove a legal point? You would have to get a Christian willing to go along with the ploy by taking the business to court, and some group to provide support for all this like ADF did here.
This seems especially shabby given that courts normally get really snippy and technical about matters of standing. Markedly more meritorious cases have been dismissed on those grounds alone, fairly routinely; and there’s a similar vein of skepticism around the notion that speculative claims of possible harms could ever amount to standing.
So a clerk or store owner could legally refuse to sell condoms if they feel that the customer will use them for gay sex? I’m not trying to slippery slope here but that scenario seems to fall in line with the court’s “logic”.
It really is an insane ruling. Carving out hate as an Evangelical “belief” is utterly ludicrous. Once again, this is a SCOTUS ruling that a five year old child can see is wrong.
What if it was Orthodox Mormons who said that hating Black people is a key part of their religion, therefore they are immune to all racism laws? That’s exactly the precedent this sets.
There are already pharmacies where they will not distribute methotrexate for rheumatoid diseases on the basis that it “could” be used for abortions. So, yes, this will, and probably has happened.
Carving out hate as an evangelical belief seems like reasonably solid empiricism. The problem isn’t that they failed to pretend that real religions must actually be cuddly and mutually compatible; but that they appear to be in favor of the notion(at least for favored sects) that claiming a law is contrary to your religious convictions confers immunity to it.
I’d really like to Locke the lot of them up.
By this we see what difference there is between the Church and the
Commonwealth. Whatsoever is lawful in the Commonwealth cannot be
prohibited by the magistrate in the Church. Whatsoever is permitted
unto any of his subjects for their ordinary use, neither can nor ought to
be forbidden by him to any sect of people for their religious uses. If any
man may lawfully take bread or wine, either sitting or kneeling in his
own house, the law ought not to abridge him of the same liberty in his
religious worship; though in the Church the use of bread and wine be
very different and be there applied to the mysteries of faith and rites of
Divine worship. But those things that are prejudicial to the commonweal
of a people in their ordinary use and are, therefore, forbidden by laws,
those things ought not to be permitted to Churches in their sacred rites.
Only the magistrate ought always to be very careful that he do not misuse his authority to the oppression of any Church, under pretence of
public good.
In addition to that, I keep having a hard time understanding how a website created by commission from someone else would be her speech. Wouldn’t the content be the speech of the person commissioning the website? Presumably, they’re directing the content and what it should look like. She’s just doing assembly of the thing.
If I draw stick figures based on inspiration and publish them. That sounds like my speech.
If I offer a service where you describe a stick figure picture and I draw it for you, and you publish it, is that my speech or yours? Am I just a fancy sophisticated tool manifesting the speech that you’re paying me to manifest?
Alternately, until AI is sophisticated enough to have opinions on what it likes and doesn’t like, get MidJourney and ChatGPT to do your designing for you. Ya gets what ya gets.
So, here’s my take- I think people have the right to associate or not, with whomever they choose, for whatever arbitrary reason seems proper to them.
However.
An institution does not. A business, as a legal construct, does not.
As a business, you enjoy certain legal protections which are granted by the government- which in a free and democratic society is obligated to treat all people as equal before the law. Those rights and privileges are contingent on your participation in the social contract: A person should not have to pay taxes which indirectly support a business they themselves would be turned away from without just cause.
A individual should have the right to refuse service- but doing so should mean they forfeit those rights and protections which the rest of us provide their business.
By which I mean legal recognition of an LLC, DBA, or other corporate structure. Insulation of personal assets from business liabilities. Health certificates or other state issued credentials. Protection of intellectual property rights. The use of the court system to redress grievances or breach of contract. FDIC insurance of your assets.
If you don’t want to play with others, they don’t need to provide you with special rights. You can operate as a sole proprietor under your own name and be personally, legally, and financially responsible for everything your business does. OR, you can abide by the social contract and enjoy the privileges it grants. But you can’t have it both ways.
Arg! I typed that very poorly. I should have written:
No, only Christians can discriminate against everyone, but no one is allowed to do anything to hurt their feelings. Christians are a protected group.
and now I will add - a -protected hate group, whose feelings are hurt by damn near everything.
I think that’s absolute truth. The behavior of Evangelical Christians as a group has devloved into nothing but hate. The EC’s have carved out hate as their dominant core belief, and the Court has just decided that a dominant core belief of a religious group can allow that group to ignore any law the group wants to ignore.
