Colorado To Pay $1.5 Million For Violating Christian Resident’s Religious Freedoms
'This is a win not just for me but for all Americans — for those who share my beliefs and for those who hold different views,' Lorie Smith said.'This is a win not just for me but for all Americans — for those who share my beliefs and for those who hold different views,' Lorie Smith said.Colorado tried forcing a Christian designer to make websites for gay 'marriages.' Now, it has to pay up.
Lorie Smith is the owner of 303 Creative, a graphic design firm based in Colorado.
While generally happy to produce work for any paying customer, Smith wanted to offer wedding-related services exclusively to straight couples because complicity in the celebration of homosexual unions would otherwise "compromise [her] Christian witness." Since Colorado's Anti-Discrimination Act would have forced her to do just that, she took the Democrat-run state to court — and won.
Months after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled 6-3 in Smith's favor and a federal circuit court barred the state from enforcing the CADA's communication and accommodation clauses against the designer, Colorado officials have come to a settlement, agreeing Tuesday to pay a hefty sum to the guarantors of their defeat.
"As the Supreme Court said, I'm free to create art consistent with my beliefs without fear of Colorado punishing me anymore," Smith said in a statement. "This is a win not just for me but for all Americans — for those who share my beliefs and for those who hold different views."
Smith's original complaint filed in 2016 claimed that Colorado law stripped her and her organization "of the freedom to choose what messages to create and to convey in the marriage context."
'The First Amendment’s protections belong to all, not just to speakers whose motives the government finds worthy.'
The complaint cited a section of the CADA that prohibits a person to refuse, withhold from, or deny the "full and equal enjoyment of the goods, services, facilities, privileges, advantages or accommodations of a place of public accommodation" to an individual on the basis of sexual preference, "gender identity," and "gender expression." Another clause in the CADA prohibits individuals from advertising that refusal.
The lawsuit asked the U.S. District Court to restore the constitutional freedoms of Smith and 303 Creative "to speak their beliefs and not be compelled to speak messages contrary to those beliefs, and to ensure that other creative professionals in Colorado have the same freedoms."
The case ultimately got kicked up the Supreme Court, which decided in June 2023 that the First Amendment bars Colorado from coercing a website designer to create content with which she disagrees.
Justice Neil Gorsuch noted in the high court's majority opinion, "The First Amendment’s protections belong to all, not just to speakers whose motives the government finds worthy. In this case, Colorado seeks to force an individual to speak in ways that align with its views but defy her conscience about a matter of major significance."
"All manner of speech — from 'pictures, films, paintings, drawings, and engravings,' to 'oral utterance and the printed word' — qualify for the First Amendment’s protections; no less can hold true when it comes to speech like Ms. Smith’s conveyed over the Internet," wrote the conservative justice.
"Consistent with the First Amendment, the Nation's answer is tolerance, not coercion," added Gorsuch.
'No government has the right to silence individuals for expressing these ideas.'
Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote in her dissenting opinion for the leftist minority that the ruling was "profoundly wrong" and will "mark gays and lesbians for second-class status."
Other social liberals similarly bemoaned the court's affirmation of free speech, including CNN talking head Van Jones, who said, "If you care about inclusion and equal opportunity and care about folks who don’t have much and are trying to make it today, this is a tragedy."
Colorado Attorney General Philip Weiser, who unsuccessfully represented the state, said at the time that the ruling was "far out of step with the will of the American people and American values."
According to Alliance Defending Freedom, the legal group that represented Smith, the Supreme Court's decision has already been cited nearly 1,000 times in court opinions, briefs, and various legal publications.
Colorado's Civil Rights Division agreed this week to pick up the bill for the CADA's defanging, covering over $1.5 million in attorneys' fees.
Weiser's office confirmed to the Denver Gazette the settlement over the fees but declined to comment.
Kristen Waggoner, the CEO and president of Alliance Defending Freedom, stated, "The government can't force Americans to say things they don't believe, and Colorado officials have paid and will continue to pay a high price when they violate this foundational freedom."
"For the past 12 years, Colorado has targeted people of faith and forced them to express messages that violate their conscience and that advance the government’s preferred ideology. First Amendment protections are non-negotiable," continued Waggoner. "Billions of people around the world believe that marriage is the union of one man and one woman and that men and women are biologically distinct. No government has the right to silence individuals for expressing these ideas or to punish those who decline to express different views."
Smith expressed hope that "that everyone will celebrate the court's decision upholding this right for each of us to speak freely."
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Supreme Court’s 303 Creative Decision Reasserts Religious Freedom — And Cites The Federalist
The decision asserts every American’s right to live his religious convictions free from state-coerced speech that violates his conscience.Pete Buttigieg expresses outrage that Supreme Court didn't prioritize LGBT agenda over Americans' constitutional rights
The United States Supreme Court ruled Friday that Colorado cannot force Christian graphic designer Lorie Smith to create art that violates her religious beliefs, particularly her belief that marriage necessarily entails the union between a man and a woman.
Justice Neil Gorsuch, writing for the majority, noted, "The First Amendment’s protections belong to all, not just to speakers whose motives the government finds worthy."
Democratic Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg is evidently of a different mind, indicating in an interview over the weekend that the court's prioritization of Americans' constitutional rights over ideological conformity is problematic.
Buttigieg spoke to CBS' Margaret Brennan on "Face the Nation" about a number issues Sunday, including the airline disruptions neither he nor his department appears capable of resolving.
Brennan raised the matter of the Supreme Court's June 30 decision in 303 Creative LLC v. Elenis, then cited Buttigieg's reactive tweet, which read, "Discrimination is wrong. Using religion as an excuse to discriminate is wrong - and unconstitutional. The Court's minority is right: the Constitution is no license for a business to discriminate. Today's ruling will move America backward."
— (@)
"Justice Gorsuch said this was a First Amendment issue where all persons are free to think and speak as they wish, not as the government demands," said Brennan. "What do you make of the argument that Colorado was labeling free speech as discrimination in order to censor it?"
Buttigieg suggested that cases such as graphic designer Lorie Smith's "are designed to get people spun up and designed to chip away at rights."
In Smith's case, Buttigieg appears to have been referencing the "right" of LGBT activists to call upon the state to force an artist to generate artwork or messaging she finds morally compromising.
"You look at Friday's decision diminishing the equality of same-sex couples. You look at a number of the decisions that have been made; they pose a question that is even deeper than these big cases. And the question is this: Did we just live to see the high water mark of freedoms and rights in this country before they were gradually taken away?" said Buttigieg.
The openly gay Biden secretary, who adopted two children with his "husband," further suggested that the court's ruling jeopardized the generational accretion of rights that has "added up and affected so many people, including me, of course, as I'm getting ready to go back to my husband and our twins for the rest of this morning, thinking about the fact that the existence of our family is is only a reality because of a one-vote margin on the Supreme Court a few years ago."
Buttigieg stressed that the Supreme Court is "very much out of step with how most Americans view these issues."
The Supreme Court has long served America as a countermajoritarian institution, upholding the Constitution even when "out of step" with public opinion.
For instance, the Supreme Court's ruling in Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, which saw U.S. state laws establishing racial segregation in public schools struck down as unconstitutional, was a deeply unpopular decision at the time. This was especially true of southern Democrats, such as Sen. Harry Byrd Sr. of Virginia, who reckoned the court was out of step with popular opinion and worked ardently to prevent desegregation.
One of the primary reasons Supreme Court justices and other federal judges appointed under Article III of the Constitution hold their posts for life is to spare them from having to pander to the mob — or as Alexander Hamilton put it in Federalist No. 78, to preclude them from developing "too great a disposition to consult popularity."
Brennan also asked Buttigieg about the provocative analogies in the amicus brief co-signed by 20 senators and 48 House members that Republican Sens. Ted Cruz (Texas) and Mike Lee (Utah) co-led, which said, "Compelling an individual to use her artistic and intellectual capabilities to create a message she opposes is the most odious form of compelled expression. Such laws coerce writers and artists into 'betraying their convictions.' ... They are the tool of totalitarian regimes, not the United States."
The brief compared the imposition of Colorado's coercive law on Smith to the requirement that an atheist musician perform at an evangelical church service or a Muslim tattoo artist be "forced to write 'My religion is the only true religion' on the body of a Christian."
Buttigieg responded, "That's really not a comparison that is relevant to this case. But more importantly, I think it's really telling that you have to think of these far-fetched hypotheticals in order to justify decisions that are actually going to have much worse impacts in the real world. And I think this, again, goes back to the broader agenda of the culture wars that are being fired up."
TheBlaze previously reported that President Joe Biden, like his DOT secretary, is upset over the court's ruling in this case.
"While the Court’s decision only addresses expressive original designs, I'm deeply concerned that the decision could invite more discrimination against LGBTQI+ Americans. More broadly, today’s decision weakens long-standing laws that protect all Americans against discrimination in public accommodations – including people of color, people with disabilities, people of faith, and women," Biden said in a statement.
Washington Post Criticism Of Christians Is All Name-Calling, No Argument
What’s most arresting about Washington Post Senior Critic-at-Large Robin Givhan’s theological musings is that they lack an actual argument.303 Creative Is Just The Government’s Latest Attempt To Conflate Christian Sexual Ethics With Racism
Like lawmakers who are presently conflating constitutionally protected traditional religious views on marriage with racial discrimination, government attorneys are trying to make 303 Creative all about race too.
Matt Anderson/Getty Images
The future of the First Amendment hinges on the 303 Creative case
4 Years Ago, SCOTUS Failed To Protect Artists From Compelled Speech. It’s About To Get Another Chance
Graphic designer Lorie Smith is challenging the same Colorado law that brought Masterpiece Cakeshop owner Jack Phillips to the Supreme Court.Today's top stories
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