1. Does this case involve restrictions on speech, compelled speech, or both?
2. Does this case involve content-based speech restrictions or viewpoint-based speech restrictions?
3. Why are content-based speech laws bad? Why are viewpoint-based speech laws worse?
4. The court holds that the Colorada public accommodations law, as applied to 303 Creative's
desire to design websites celebrating traditional marriages but not
those celebrating same-sex marriages, restricts "pure speech" on the
basis of content. Thus, the compelling interest test applies. Or does
the Court apply a categorical rule forbidding compelled viewpoint
mandates? ["When a state public accommodation law and the Constitution
collide, there can be no question which must prevail."] Does
Colorado have a compelling interest justifying its restrictions on 303 Creative's
speech? If so, what is that compelling interest and is it the least
restrictive means of protecting that compelling interest? Are their many
other web designers who could design wedding sites celebrating same-sex
marriages? How does this affect the analysis? Does Lorie Smith have a
"monopoly" on unique Lorie Smith designs?
5. If the restrictions in this case constitute viewpoint restrictions, does that affect the analysis? If so, how so?
6.
Suppose Westboro Baptist Church, a church known mostly for its extreme
opposition to homosexuality and same-sex marriage, contacts a gay web
designer and asks him to create a web site celebrating the Church's
strong anti-gay beliefs. The web designer replies I cannot in good
conscience create such a web site for you or anyone else. Under a public
accommodations law protecting religion and religious "creed" from
discrimination, must the web designer create the Church's web site? Or
does the Free Speech Clause protect his right against compelled speech?
Unlike Free Exercise, which protects only religious exercise, the Free
Speech Clause protects the expressive autonomy of all speakers
regardless of whether their viewpoint is popular or offensive.
7.
Is 303 Creative a case involving two serious restrictions on free
expression? If Lorie Smith (the graphic artist) creates a web site
expressing a message she wishes to create--celebrating traditional
marriage--what happens under the public accommodations law? This speech
she wishes to create triggers an obligation to create speech she wishes
not to create--web sites celebrating same-sex marriage. Are we dealing
with one or two abridgements of freedom of speech? Is this based on the
content or viewpoint of her expression?
8. Consider this powerful passage from Justice Gorsuch's majority opinion:
"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."
9. Now consider this passage:
"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. As the Tenth Circuit observed, if
Ms. Smith offers
wedding websites celebrating marriages she endorses, the State
intends to “forc[e her] to create
custom websites” celebrating other
marriages she does not. 6 F. 4th, at 1178. Colorado seeks to compel
this speech in order to “excis[e] certain ideas or viewpoints from the public dialogue.”…Indeed,
the Tenth Circuit recognized that the coercive “[e]liminati[on]” of dissenting
“ideas” about marriage constitutes
Colorado’s “very purpose” in
seeking to apply its law to Ms. Smith." 6
F. 4th, at 1178."
Does government have any
business using coercion to eliminate competing ideas about the
definition of marriage from the marketplace of ideas? This is not what
free nations do. It is what totalitarian nations do. This is why the
compelled speech doctrine is so fundamental to freedom of thought,
belief, and expression.
10. Justice Sotomayor
says that if Ms. Smith doesn't wish to create art celebrating same-sex
weddings, all she needs to do is remain silent about all marriages. But
if she chooses to create art celebrating opposite-sex marriages, she is
choosing to open herself to being compelled to equally celebrate
same-sex marriages. Thus, Sotomayor concedes that the
Colorado law both restricts and compels speech on the basis of
viewpoint.
In other words, if Ms. Smith creates art she wishes to
create, she must also create art she does not wish to create. If she creates art celebrating
traditional marriage, she must also create art celebrating same-sex marriage.This
is what I call a double whammy—a double viewpoint-based law. In other words,
the law imposes both a viewpoint restriction on speech she wishes to express and
a viewpoint compulsion of speech she does not wish to express. If she says 2 plus
2 equals 4, the law requires her to say 2 plus 2 equals 5! The penalty for
expressing a viewpoint she wishes to express is the requirement that she must
also express a competing viewpoint she wishes not to express.This is a deadly
poison to the First Amendment and the right of a speaker both to say what she
wishes to say and to not say what she does not wish to say.
11. One last quotation from Justice Gorsuch: "
Today, however, the dissent abandons what this Court’s cases
have recognized time and time again: A
commitment to speech for only some messages and some persons is no commitment
at all. By approving a government’s
effort to “[e]liminat[e]” disfavored “ideas,” today’s dissent is emblematic of
an unfortunate tendency by some to defend First Amendment values only when they
find the speaker’s message sympathetic.
But “[i]f liberty means anything at all, it means the right to tell
people what they do not want to hear.”