303 Creative LLC v. Elenis
600 U.S. 570 (2023)
Premium Feature
Subscribe to Lexplug to listen to the Case Podcast.
Rule of Law:
The First Amendment's Free Speech Clause prohibits a state from compelling an individual or business that provides original, expressive services to create speech that violates their sincerely held beliefs.
Facts:
- Lorie Smith is the owner and founder of 303 Creative LLC, a graphic and website design company.
- Smith decided to expand her business to offer original, customized wedding websites that would celebrate and convey each couple's unique love story.
- Smith holds a sincere religious belief that marriage is exclusively a union between one man and one woman.
- Due to this belief, Smith does not want to create websites that celebrate or promote same-sex marriages, as she believes it would contradict her faith and compel her to express a message she does not endorse.
- Smith is willing to work with all people regardless of their sexual orientation on projects that do not contradict her beliefs, and has never created expressions that contradict her views for any client.
- Smith worried that Colorado's Anti-Discrimination Act (CADA) would force her to create websites for same-sex weddings if she began offering wedding website services to the public.
Procedural Posture:
- Lorie Smith and 303 Creative LLC filed a pre-enforcement lawsuit against Colorado officials in the U.S. District Court for the District of Colorado, seeking an injunction to prevent the enforcement of the Colorado Anti-Discrimination Act (CADA) against them.
- The U.S. District Court for the District of Colorado ruled against Smith, denying her request for an injunction.
- Smith (as appellant) appealed the district court's decision to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit.
- A divided panel of the Tenth Circuit affirmed the district court's ruling, holding that while the wedding websites were pure speech, Colorado had a compelling interest in ensuring equal access to services that justified the law's infringement on Smith's First Amendment rights.
- Smith and 303 Creative LLC petitioned the U.S. Supreme Court for a writ of certiorari, which was granted.
Premium Content
Subscribe to Lexplug to view the complete brief
You're viewing a preview with Rule of Law, Facts, and Procedural Posture
Issue:
Does applying a state public accommodations law to compel a website designer to create expressive designs speaking messages with which the designer disagrees violate the Free Speech Clause of the First Amendment?
Opinions:
Majority - Justice Gorsuch
Yes. Applying the Colorado Anti-Discrimination Act to compel Ms. Smith to create websites for same-sex weddings would violate the First Amendment because it constitutes impermissible compelled speech. The creation of customized websites is pure speech, and the First Amendment protects a speaker's right to choose the content of their own message, including the right to not speak on a subject. Forcing Smith to create a website celebrating a same-sex marriage would require her to 'speak as the State demands' on a matter of major significance, which is a direct infringement on the 'sphere of intellect and spirit' protected by the Free Speech Clause, as established in precedents like West Virginia Bd. of Ed. v. Barnette and Hurley v. Irish-American Gay, Lesbian and Bisexual Group of Boston, Inc. While public accommodations laws serve a vital interest in preventing status-based discrimination, they cannot be used to compel an individual to create expressive speech that contravenes their conscience.
Dissenting - Justice Sotomayor
No. The Colorado Anti-Discrimination Act regulates commercial conduct, not speech, and any incidental burden on expression is justified by the state's compelling interest in ensuring equal access to the public marketplace. The law's focal point is the act of discriminating against individuals, not the suppression of ideas. By opening her business to the public, the designer assumed a duty to serve all members of the public without unjust discrimination based on protected status. The majority's decision grants a business open to the public a constitutional right to refuse to serve members of a protected class for the first time in history, creating a 'new license to discriminate' and marking gay and lesbian people for second-class status. This profoundly misinterprets precedent and threatens to balkanize the market by allowing businesses to refuse service to any group based on an expressive justification.
Analysis:
This decision establishes a significant precedent by holding that the First Amendment's protection against compelled speech can exempt businesses that provide expressive services from generally applicable public accommodations laws. It distinguishes between refusing service based on a customer's status (which remains prohibited) and refusing to create a specific message that conflicts with the speaker's beliefs. The ruling will likely lead to future litigation to define the line between an 'expressive' business, which may be able to claim this exemption, and a non-expressive one, which cannot. This changes the landscape of anti-discrimination law by elevating the expressive rights of certain commercial actors over the equal access principles underlying public accommodations statutes.
Unlock the full brief for 303 Creative LLC v. Elenis