Docket number: 21-476 (Supreme Court)
The Hamilton Lincoln Law Institute, joining with the Cato Institute, filed an amicus brief urging the Supreme Court to grant review in 303 Creative v. Elenis.
303 Creative is the single-member web design company of petitioner Lorie Smith, a Christian graphic designer who has religious objections to the celebration of same-sex marriages. As the court below acknowledged, Ms. Smith’s website designs are unquestionably her individual expression. Still, it decided that Ms. Smith’s First Amendment rights must yield to the state’s interest in ensuring its citizens have equal access to custom goods and services. HLLI’s brief contends that the lower court underestimated the severity of speech compulsions, unduly deferred to the state’s preferred means of satisfying its interest, and relied on a conception of “monopoly” that is foreign to First Amendment doctrine and reality.
Internet website design is a highly decentralized, competitive, national market. And again, the lower court acknowledged that same-sex couples could easily obtain wedding-website design services from other designers. But according to the court, that was not good enough, because the services may not be of the same caliber and quality of Ms. Smith’s services. Redefining the market in this way violated a core tenet of our constitutional order: an individual has the right to control her own mind and its creative energies.
The Supreme Court announced that it would hear the case. On May 31, 2022, HLLI, alongside law professors Dale Carpenter and Eugene Volokh, Ilya Shapiro, and the American Unity Fund, filed an amicus brief on the merits of the case in support of petitioners.