Same-sex ruling paves way for further setbacks
If there is one lesson from this iteration of the U.S. Supreme Court, it is that hard-fought rights can be taken away without vigilance. This lesson was crystallized a year ago in the Dobbs decision, overturning Roe and 50 years of reproductive rights. It was a lesson demonstrated in last week’s decision to end affirmative action in college admissions, and then again in a 6-3 decision that will allow a Christian graphics artist to refuse to work with samesex couples.
The artist, Lorie Smith of Colorado, wants to design wedding websites, but not for same-sex marriages, which are legal.
In the majority opinion, Justice Neil Gorsuch wrote how the Constitution “envisions the United States as a rich and complex place where all persons are free to think and speak as they wish, not as the government demands.”
But just what was the government demanding in this case? Smith had not lost her right to speak against same-sex marriage or her right to design wedding websites. Now, though, she has the ability to refuse service to an entire class of people, who, again, have a legal right to marriage.
This opens the door for people working in creative professions — web designers, photographers, writers — to deny services to same-sex couples. The court’s majority has sought to make a distinction between so-called expressive services that involve some form of speech versus other forms of businesses, such as dining at a restaurant. Time will tell.
We’re firmly with Justice Sonia Sotomayor, who warned in her dissent that this ruling will “mark gays and lesbians for second-class status” and opens the door for other forms of discrimination.
Following the logic of the court, if a person can deny services to gay couples because of a personal belief that gay marriage is unacceptable, then what of other forms of discrimination? What of interracial couples?
The majority’s opinion, Sotomayor wrote, “cannot be limited to discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation or gender identity.”
The U.S. Supreme Court was remade during President Donald Trump’s tenure, with Senate Majority Leader Mitch Mcconnell first refusing to advance the nomination of Judge Merrick Garland to fill the seat once held by the late Justice Antonin Scalia until after the 2016 presidential election. Gorsuch was appointed in 2017 to fill that seat.
Mcconnell then sped up the nomination of Judge Amy Coney Barrett to fill the seat once held by the late Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg in advance of the 2020 presidential election.
The result of such political maneuvering has been an activist court whose conservative majority has upended precedent and is, more often than not, far out of step with most Americans. It is a court in which few Americans have confidence and whose rulings are particularly adverse for women, people of color and people who are LGBTQ.
Rights can be lost, but they can also be regained through voting, vigilance and advocacy.