Today the Supreme Court ruled that a web designer who had never been asked to produce a wedding web site for a non-existent gay couple could refuse to do so. US legal system plays fantasy law. She doesn’t even produce websites
Today the Supreme Court decided on a 6-3 decision that Lorie Smith, a Christian graphic designer based in Colorado, was able to refuse to create a website for a gay couple getting married. There is a Colorado law that bars discrimination based on sexual orientation, race, gender and other characteristics. Smith had argued that the law violates her free speech rights.
One of the liberal judges commented “Today, the Court, for te first time in its history, grants a business open to the public a constitutional right to refuse to serve members of a protected class”. There is concern that businesses could now discriminate, refusing to serve Black, Jewish or Muslim customers, interracial or interfaith couples or immigrants.
Fantasy case
In a bizarre twist it turns out that the only true thing about this case is that Lorie Smith is a graphic designer.
In the case papers a couple called Stewart and Mike are mentioned. According to the court papers Stewart contacted Lorie Smith in September 2016 about some design work and a possible website for his upcoming wedding. From the details provided in an enquiry form that was part of the submission, it turns out that Stewart was himself a graphic designer with his own website that he’d created.
From the details provided a journalist (Melissa Gira Grant) decided to contact him to get a comment about the court ruling. He was a little confused. He had never heard of the case. While the details on the inquiry form were his he had not filled it in. At the time the form was completed he was already married to a woman.
“If somebody’s pulled my information, as some kind of supporting information or documentation, somebody’s falsified that,”
He is currently happily married with a child
Alliance Defending Freedom and Smith making stuff up
So we know that no website was asked for and that there was no gay couple. It is not known if Lorie Smith actually started this case, or whether she was recruited by the right wing legal advocacy group Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF). Both would have known in 2016 when it went through the Colorado court, that the case was a fiction. The contact details of the person enquiring about the website were available at the outset. When the case was lost it was noted that the offending enquiry had not actually been received until the day after the case was filed. There are numerous inconsistencies that the important question is why did the Supreme Court take it seriously?
A more thorough investigation of this fantasy action is available.