“Today is a sad day in American constitutional law and in the lives of LGBT people,” Sonia Sotomayor wrote in her dissenting opinion
The Supreme Court on Friday ruled that businesses can discriminate against LGBTQ Americans.
The court ruled 6-3 in favor of a Colorado web designer who argued that she has the right under the First Amendment to refuse to create wedding websites for gay people. Lori Smith, the website designer who brought the case, was never even hired to make a website for a same-sex couple, nor has she ever created a wedding website, as HuffPost points out.
Sonia Sotomayor issued a blistering dissenting opinion. “Today, the Court, for the first time in its history, grants a business open to the public a constitutional right to refuse to serve members of a protected class,” she wrote. “The Court does so for the first time in its history.” She added that the Constitution “contains no right to refuse service to a disfavored group.”
The ruling comes on the final day of the Supreme Court’s nine-month session, during which they have launched on unrelenting attack on marginalized communities. The latest blow came Thursday, when the court’s six conservative justices struck down race-based affirmative action in college admissions.
Source link: https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/supreme-court-rules-businesses-discriminate-gay-1234781389/
