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No, he doesn’t have to ‘bake that cake’.
The paradox of civil rights legislation was that in the name of providing civil rights, it destroyed the civil rights of small business owners, landlords and any number of other people. What was an emergency response to a pervasive problem that had been created by the government essentially upended the Bill of Rights and provided governments with unlimited authority of a scope that had never been contemplated before.
And we’re still living with the fallout.
Before the rise of the LGBTQ movement, the clashes had been local and hadn’t affected a group whose rights were clearly protected by the First Amendment.
Since then, civil rights has run into religious freedom like a freight train into a brick wall most famously in the ‘bake a cake’ case in which a Christian baker was harassed for refusing to make cakes for assorted LGBTQ events. Unlike restaurant segregation, these cases tended to target people in creative professions, such as cake makers, florists, wedding photographers and web designers, making this not just about religious freedom, but freedom of speech.
Can the government force someone to engage in speech supportive of something they oppose?
The Supreme Court has, more forcefully than on previous occasions, stepped in on the side of religious freedom against a civil rights overreach that now demands compelled speech from a wedding website designer.
Ms. Smith seeks to engage in protected First Amendment speech; Colorado seeks to compel speech she does not wish to provide. As the Tenth Circuit observed, if Ms. Smith offers wedding websites celebrating marriages she endorses, the State intends to compel her to create custom websites celebrating other marriages she does not.
…If she wishes to speak, she must either speak as the State demands or face sanctions for expressing her own beliefs, sanctions that may include compulsory participation in “remedial . . . training,” filing periodic compliance reports, and paying monetary fines. That is an impermissible abridgement of the First Amendment’s right to speak freely.
Under Colorado’s logic, the government may compel anyone who speaks for pay on a given topic to accept all commissions on that same topic—no matter the message—if the topic somehow implicates a customer’s statutorily protected trait… Taken seriously, that 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.
The decision checkmakes the ‘common carriers’ measures of civil rights law which treated everything as a public accommodation. Speech cannot be a public accommodation.
“This Court has also long recognized that no public accommodations law is immune from the demands of the Constitution.”
It goes on to note that our voice belongs to us… not to the state.
“As the Tenth Circuit saw it, Colorado has a compelling interest in ensuring “equal access to publicly available goods and services,” and no option short of coercing speech from Ms. Smith can satisfy that interest because she plans to offer “unique services” that are, “by definition, unavailable elsewhere.” … But that hardly means a State may coopt an individual’s voice for its own purposes.”
“A rule otherwise would conscript any unique voice to disseminate the government’s preferred messages in violation of the First Amendment.”
That’s the fundamental issue here. Do our voices belong to us to the state?
The Left believes that our voices belong to the state. The Supreme Court has restored our voices to us.
Let’s hope so because all our terrible initiatives seem to end up surfacing in the US in one form or another sooner or later. This ruling wouldn’t seem to cover this sort of eventuality.
Thanks Una. For those who haven’t followed the story, Farage had all his accounts cancelled without explanation (obviously for political reasons) and no new bank in UK will allow him to open a new account. So he has to leave the country
They have foreign banks in the UK.
Yeah, it will be interesting to see if he can find a new bank. So far 7 banks had turned him down.
It’s amazing and distressing how much power the left-wing minority wields in the cause of fascism.
I did a web search to find out which 7 banks have denied him access because they hate Brexit but Google blocks the results. Germany has banks in the UK but that country is the number one beneficiary of the EU so I can guess what its banks are up to.
Farage should open some “offshore” accounts in the Mediterranean. If it’s good enough for the Biden crime family, it’s more than good enough for him.
No wonder the left wants to pack the courts with judges of their twisted ideologies. The courts are supposed to uphold the laws, not re-write them to suit their views.
That’s a good one. A paradox. The left loves paradoxes, as long as they are in their favor 🙂
A paradox in your favor.. Like “Bank error in your favor. Collect $50” cards from Monopoly 🙂
I got an extra $500. from my old credit union once. I gave it back. That pissed of my greedy and dishonest wife, I remember.
Oh, yeah. I had that happen at least once. I never touched it and they eventually found it and took it back. I figure it’s better not to touch it as they usually find it eventually.
Good call.
In my case, they handed it to me in the drive through and the written withdrawal amount didn’t include it so I could’ve got away with keeping it. I was tempted to keep it for a second or split second but it would’ve weighed on my conscience and I was worried that the teller would get into trouble, although I seriously doubt she would’ve, other than a lecture by her boss.
One should expect that the depraved woke leftist dems will find some
acrobatic contortion to eventually nullify this Supreme Court Ruling.
Alertness and vigilance still must still be maintained.
No more Free Speech Zones on Campus make the whole place Free Speach Zone No snitches or those whining little twats who keep sticking their noses in they need to be told to keep their fat noses out