Refusing service to gay people

Learn the key legal distinction between refusing a person and declining to endorse a specific message. Theoretically, based on this decision alone, it shouldn't. Today, the Colorado attorney general said the decision gives businesses free rein to discriminate.

Lorie Smith, Owner and Founder, Creative: And that right is guaranteed to artists like myself, but also to artists like the LGBT Web site designer and graphic designer, who should not be forced by the government to create messages opposing same-sex marriage.

So there's this huge disparity between the political climate that we're living in and the lives of everyday people. What we're seeing is a mainstreaming of an organization that we used to consider an extremist organization that's been labeled a hate group by advocacy groups coming in and advocating something that we have now made the law of the land essentially.

Supreme Court ruling allows

It's that we're changing precedent here. And that is a statement that we have not seen before. On a ideological split, the Supreme Court sided with an evangelical Christian site designer who does not want to create sites for same-sex weddings, even though a Colorado anti.

Supreme Court Rulings on the Right to Refuse Service Recent court decisions are reshaping business rights. She told us that she thought the fight for her First Amendment rights was not just for Christian conservatives, but for all artists.

Writing for the majority, Justice Neil Gorsuch said: "The First Amendment protects an individual's right to speak his mind, regardless of whether the government considers his speech sensible and well-intentioned, or deeply misguided and likely to cause anguish or incalculable grief.

Notice: Transcripts are machine and human generated and lightly edited for accuracy. You're right. So the landscape here is changing for us. Geoff, the justice has sided with her on a ideological split, saying that forcing her to make Web sites for something she doesn't believe in would violate her First Amendment rights.

Before the oral arguments, we talked to Lorie Smith, the Web designer who's at the center of this case. John Yang John Yang. Gay hotel nice may contain errors. Phil Weiser DColorado Attorney General: This sweeping opinion promises to destabilize the public marketplace, enabling and encouraging all types of businesses, not just those who make Web sites, to have a First Amendment right to refuse customers because of who they are.

John Yang has more now on the court's ruling in favor of a Web designer who refuses to create Web sites for same-sex couples because of her religious beliefs. And so cracking that door open, a lot of people feel like, could be the start of an avalanche.

A lot of people may be thinking that this was already settled by the Supreme Court, because, five years ago, there was a case from Colorado as well sort of dealing with some of these issues. Yes, that case was similar, in that you had a baker who said that his custom cakes amounted to art and he did not want to make a custom cake for a same-sex couple who wanted to get married.

Winston Wilde Winston Wilde. New research shows that, in addition to negatively impacting mental and physical health, discriminatory service refusals undermine LGBTQ people’s access to services. This really remains to be seen.

On a ideological split, the Supreme Court sided with an evangelical Christian website designer who does not want to create sites for same-sex weddings, even though a Colorado anti-discrimination law would require her to. It does narrow this to services that express creative content, expression, but could businesses try to frame their businesses in those terms?