Arizona Attorney General Kris Mayes announced that she will not abide by the Supreme Court’s recent ruling on religious freedom, calling the majority conservative Justices “woefully misguided.”
Last week, the Supreme Court ruled in favor of Colorado resident and graphic designer Lorie Smith in a case involving freedom of religion and protections against compelled speech.
“. . . Lorie Smith sued her state over The Colorado Anti-Discrimination Act (CADA), a law that prohibits a business from refusing service based on someone’s identity. Smith, who owns a graphic design business called 303 Creative, wrote a webpage explaining that she would not create wedding websites for same-sex couples. But under CADA, this statement was considered to be illegal.
In a 6-3 decision, the Supreme Court ruled that Colorado’s enforcement of CADA is a violation of the First Amendment and Smith cannot be compelled by the state to create a website for same-sex couples if she chooses not to.”
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The state of Arizona has a similar law in place which could require business owners to participate in compelled speech that violates their sincerely held religious beliefs, due to the state’s classification of “unequal goods, services, facilities, privileges, advantages, or accommodations” as “unlawful discrimination.”
“Today, a woefully misguided majority of the United States Supreme Court has decided that businesses open to the public may, in certain circumstances, discriminate against LGBTQ+ Americans,” the AG posted on Twitter. “The idea that the Constitution gives businesses the right to discriminate is ‘profoundly wrong,'” she continued, referencing Supreme Court Justice Sotomayor’s dissenting opinion. The opinion read, “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.”
AG Mayes stated that, despite the Supreme Court’s ruling, “Arizona law prohibits discrimination in places of public accommodation, including discrimination because of sexual orientation and gender identity.” She promised to “continue to enforce Arizona’s public accommodation law to its fullest extent.” She also encouraged anyone who feels they have been a victim of discrimination to file a complaint with her office.
Attorney General Mayes’s approach to the situation mirrors the offensive measures taken by Colorado’s Civil Rights Division. The state has similarly encouraged citizens to source out these instances of alleged discrimination and report them.
Lori Smith took the state to court over the anti-discrimination laws that nearly bankrupted bakery owner Jack Phillips, who had been sued multiple times for refusing to decorate a cake endorsing homosexual marriage and gender transitions. In a lawsuit, Philips’s attorneys recently argued that “the state is ‘on a crusade to crush’ Phillips because government officials ‘despise what he believes and how he practices his faith.'”
The left’s response to the Supreme Court’s ruling clearly examples the war being waged on religious liberty in the U.S.
