In a massive win for freedom of speech, the U.S. Supreme Court has voted 6-3 in favour of free speech over against forced speech.
Lori Smith, a Christian graphic designer was found to be well within her constitutional rights to refuse a Colorado law forcing her to create PRIDE propaganda or face unemployment.
Smith, who has LGBTQ+ clients, among others, declined one man’s request to make a ‘wedding website’ to promote so-called gay “marriage.”
The decision not to salute, goosestep in unison with, and wave the PRIDE flag, put her at odds with Colorado’s – Democrat-run – weaponised anti-discrimination act (CADA).
In sum, her right to conscientiously object to promoting PRIDE’s golden calf was ruled by a Tenth circuit court to be a violation of CADA’s ‘protected class,’ Public Accommodations prohibitions.
Smith ‘not producing content that contradicts biblical truth regardless of who orders it,’ landed squarely in the discrimination act’s rules against denying a person service.
To their credit, the circuit court did agree Smith had established there was a ‘credible threat of sanctions unless she conformed her views to those of the State’s.’
No allowances were made for the clear distinction between refusing to serve a person and refusing to serve their ideology.
Overruling the district court, Justice Neil Gorsuch, who delivered the SCOTUS ruling stated, “Laws along these lines have done much to secure the civil rights of all Americans. But in this particular case Colorado seeks to use its law to compel an individual to create speech she does not believe.”
“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.’
“Generally, too, the government may not compel a person to speak its own preferred messages,” he added.
Creating a precedent for the protection of freedom of speech online, SCOTUS said, “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.”
Slamming Colorado’s erosion of protected first amendment free speech, they added, “As surely as Ms. Smith seeks to engage in protected First Amendment speech, Colorado seeks to compel speech Ms. Smith does not wish to provide.
“The State intends to ‘force her to create custom websites’ celebrating other marriages she does not,” thus, “compelling her to speak in order with the ideas or viewpoints” the state favours.
Under Colorado’s logic, anyone could be compelled to say only what the government approved.
This “principle would allow the government to force all manner of artists, speechwriters, and others whose services involve speech to speak what they do not believe on pain of penalty.”
For example, “The government could require ‘an unwilling Muslim movie director to make a film with a Zionist message, or an atheist muralist to accept a commission celebrating Evangelical zeal.”
What we’re here today to ask, Justice Gorsuch explained, is, “can a State force someone who provides her own expressive services to abandon her conscience and speak its preferred message instead?” (p.21)
To which the opinion of the court was, no.
“Tolerance, not coercion, is our Nation’s answer.
“The First Amendment envisions the United States as a rich and complex place where all persons are free to think and speak as they wish, not as the government demands.
“Because Colorado seeks to deny that promise, the judgment [against Lori Smith] is Reversed.”
Responding, Vice President, Harris, damned the 70-page 303 Creative v. Elenis decision, arguing something along the lines of, “We’re all gonna die at the hands of bigots.”
‘Cackling’ Kamala wrote, “The Supreme Court has paved the way for businesses across our nation to discriminate in the name of ‘free expression.’
“This decision threatens future progress,” she warned.
The Woke White House VP then vowed to ‘rigorously’ fight to force everyone to speak, think, follow, and fall in line with government directives via The Equality Act.
Legacy media weren’t a whole lot better.
Trying to make sense of the sensible SCOTUS ruling, they appeared dazed and confused.
AP, riding The New Republic’s meltdown went on the offensive, accusing Smith’s lawyers, Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF), of faking the SSM website request, and manufacturing the entire event.
Firing back, Kristen Waggoner, ADF CEO, and general counsel for Smith, called the claim a “desperate attempt to malign them, and their client.”
Waggoner inferred legacy media were actively trying to distract attention away from the “critical ruling affirming free speech, by blatantly distorting the facts of the case.”
“Everyone, including those who identify as LGBT, should be thrilled that SCOTUS upheld free speech in this case, which is a win for ALL Americans.
“Dissenters should criticize the ruling based on its substance rather than perpetuating falsehoods about the case,” her ADF Twitter thread rightly advised.
The June 30 SCOTUS decision was followed by another win against “unconstitutional censorship.”
U.S. District Judge Terry Doughty of Louisiana granted a cease and desist order against the Biden Administration’s COVID-era policing of misinformation, and disinformation.
Judge Doughty’s decision limits the White House’s ability to coerce social media companies into “removing, deleting, suppressing, or reducing content containing protected free speech.”
