# 303 Creative LLC v. Elenis

Note: Where it is feasible, a syllabus (headnote) will be released, as is being done in connection with this case, at the time the opinion is issued. The syllabus constitutes no part of the opinion of the Court but has been prepared by the Reporter of Decisions for the convenience of the reader. See United States v. Detroit Timber & Lumber Co., 200 U. S. 321, 337.
SUPREME COURT OF THE UNITED STATES
Syllabus
303 CREATIVE LLC ET AL. v. ELENIS ET AL. CERTIORARI TO THE UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS FOR THE TENTH CIRCUIT No. 21–476. Argued December 5, 2022—Decided June 30, 2023
Lorie Smith wants to expand her graphic design business, 303 Creative LLC, to include services for couples seeking wedding websites. But Ms. Smith worries that Colorado will use the Colorado Anti-Discrimination Act to compel her—in violation of the First Amendment—to create websites celebrating marriages she does not endorse. To clarify her rights, Ms. Smith filed a lawsuit seeking an injunction to prevent the State from forcing her to create websites celebrating marriages that defy her belief that marriage should be reserved to unions between one man and one woman.
CADA prohibits all “public accommodations” from denying “the full and equal enjoyment” of its goods and services to any customer based on his race, creed, disability, sexual orientation, or other statutorily enumerated trait. Colo. Rev. Stat. §24–34–601(2)(a). The law defines “public accommodation” broadly to include almost every public-facing business in the State. §24–34–601(1). Either state officials or private citizens may bring actions to enforce the law. §§24–34–306, 24–34–602(1). And a variety of penalties can follow any violation.
Ultimately, the district court held that Ms. Smith was not entitled to the injunction she sought, and the Tenth Circuit affirmed.
Held: The First Amendment prohibits Colorado from forcing a website designer to create expressive designs speaking messages with which the designer disagrees. Pp. 6–26.
(a) The framers designed the Free Speech Clause of the First Amendment to protect the “freedom to think as you will and to speak as you think.” Boy Scouts of America v. Dale, 530 U. S. 640, 660–661 (internal quotation marks omitted). The freedom to speak is among our inalienable rights. The freedom of thought and speech is “indispensable to the discovery and spread of political truth.” Whitney v. California, 274 U. S. 357, 375 (Brandeis, J., concurring). For these reasons, “[i]f there is any fixed star in our constitutional constellation,” West Virginia Bd. of Ed. v. Barnette, 319 U. S. 624, 642, it is the principle that the government may not interfere with “an uninhibited marketplace of ideas,” McCullen v. Coakley, 573 U. S. 464, 476 (internal quotation marks omitted).
These cases illustrate that the First Amendment protects an individual’s right to speak his mind regardless of whether the government considers his speech sensible and well intentioned or deeply “misguided,” Hurley, 515 U. S., at 574, and likely to cause “anguish” or “incalculable grief,” Snyder v. Phelps, 562 U. S. 443, 456. Generally, too, the government may not compel a person to speak its own preferred messages. See Tinker v. Des Moines Independent Community School Dist., 393 U. S. 503, 505. Pp. 6–9.
(b) Applying these principles to the parties’ stipulated facts, the Court agrees with the Tenth Circuit that the wedding websites Ms. Smith seeks to create qualify as pure speech protected by the First Amendment under this Court’s precedents. Ms. Smith’s websites will express and communicate ideas—namely, those that “celebrate and promote the couple’s wedding and unique love story” and those that “celebrat[e] and promot[e]” what Ms. Smith understands to be a marriage. Speech conveyed over the internet, like all other manner of speech, qualifies for the First Amendment’s protections. And the Court agrees with the Tenth Circuit that the wedding websites Ms. Smith seeks to create involve her speech, a conclusion supported by the parties’ stipulations, including that Ms. Smith intends to produce a final story for each couple using her own words and original artwork. While Ms. Smith’s speech may combine with the couple’s in a final product, an individual “does not forfeit constitutional protection simply by combining multifarious voices” in a single communication. Hurley, 515 U. S., at 569.
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.” 6 F. 4th, at 1179–1180 (internal quotation marks omitted). In some sense, of course, her voice is unique; so is everyone’s. But that hardly means a State may coopt an individual’s voice for its own purposes. The speaker in Hurley had an “enviable” outlet for speech, and the Boy Scouts in Dale offered an arguably unique experience, but in both cases this Court held that the State could not use its public accommodations statute to deny a speaker the right “to choose the content of his own message.” Hurley, 515 U. S., at 573; see Dale, 530 U. S., at 650–656. A rule otherwise would conscript any unique voice to disseminate the government’s preferred messages in violation of the First Amendment. Pp. 9–15.
(c) Colorado now seems to acknowledge that the First Amendment does prohibit it from coercing Ms. Smith to create websites expressing any message with which she disagrees. Alternatively, Colorado contends, Ms. Smith must simply provide the same commercial product to all, which she can do by repurposing websites celebrating marriages she does endorse for marriages she does not. Colorado’s theory rests on a belief that this case does not implicate pure speech, but rather the sale of an ordinary commercial product, and that any burden on Ms. Smith’s speech is purely “incidental.” On the State’s telling, then, speech more or less vanishes from the picture—and, with it, any need for First Amendment scrutiny. Colorado’s alternative theory, however, does not sit easily with its stipulation that Ms. Smith does not seek to sell an ordinary commercial good but intends to create “customized and tailored” expressive speech for each couple “to celebrate and promote the couple’s wedding and unique love story.” Colorado seeks to compel just the sort of speech that it tacitly concedes lies beyond its reach.
The First Amendment’s protections belong to all, not just to speakers whose motives the government finds worthy. In this case, Colorado seeks to force an individual to speak in ways that align with its views but defy her conscience about a matter of major significance. In the past, other States in Barnette, Hurley, and Dale have similarly tested the First Amendment’s boundaries by seeking to compel speech they thought vital at the time. But abiding the Constitution’s commitment to the freedom of speech means all will encounter ideas that are “misguided, or even hurtful.” Hurley, 515 U. S., at 574. Consistent with the First Amendment, the Nation’s answer is tolerance, not coercion. The First Amendment envisions the United States as a rich and complex place where all persons are free to think and speak as they wish, not as the government demands. Colorado cannot deny that promise consistent with the First Amendment. Pp. 15–19, 24–25.
6 F. 4th 1160, reversed.
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