In a scathing dissent on Friday, liberal Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor tore into the court’s conservative majority for what she called a “heartbreaking” ruling on discrimination and free speech. The case centered on the evangelical owner of a website design business—303 Creative LLC—who argued that Colorado’s anti-discrimination laws would violate her free speech rights by compelling her to make websites for gay couples. The court ruled 6-3 in favor of the business owner. “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,” Sotomayor, who was joined by Justices Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson, wrote. “That is wrong. Profoundly wrong.” Sotomayor also implied that the ruling was part of a trend of “reactionary exclusion” toward marginalized groups. “The act of discrimination has never constituted protected expression under the First Amendment,” she wrote.
