Whether designing a webpage for customers counts as speech and therefore whether a designer could be compelled by Colorado law to design wedding pages for same-sex couples took center stage before the Supreme Court this morning.
Creative 303 LLC vs. Elenis came before the Court this morning and brought with it a tangled thicket of competing Supreme Court precedents about when the government can compel businesses or institutions to pass along messages or ideas they object to. At the heart of this case, Lorie Smith, owner of Creative 303 LLC, wants to design web pages for weddings. But she has religious objections to same-sex marriage and doesn't want to design pages to celebrate gay couples. This puts her at odds with the Colorado Anti-Discrimination Act, and so she has gone to federal court to try to get a ruling in her favor.
