Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/22pdf/21-476_c185.pdf
Page Number: 55.0

Cite as:  600 U. S. ____ (2023) 

23 

SOTOMAYOR, J., dissenting 

enforce  its  antidiscrimination  laws  against  the  company.
As the majority puts it, however, Smith “worries that, if she 
enters  the  wedding  website  business,  the  State  will  force
her  to  convey  messages  inconsistent  with  her  belief  that 
marriage  should  be  reserved  to  unions  between  one  man 
and one woman.”  Ante, at 2.  So Smith and her company,
the petitioners here, sued the State in federal court.  They
sought a court decree giving them a special exemption from 
CADA’s Accommodation Clause (which, remember, makes 
it unlawful for a business to hold itself out to the public yet 
deny  to  any  individual,  because  of  sexual  orientation,  the
full and equal enjoyment of the business’s goods or services, 
see  supra,  at  3–4)  and  CADA’s  Communication  Clause 
(which makes it unlawful to advertise that goods or services 
will  be  denied  because  of  sexual  orientation,  see  supra, 
at 4).  App. 303–304. 

The breadth of petitioners’ pre-enforcement challenge is 
astounding.  According to Smith, the Free Speech Clause of
the First Amendment entitles her company to refuse to sell 
any  “websites  for  same-sex  weddings,”  even  though  the
company  plans  to  offer  wedding  websites  to  the  general 
public.  Ibid.; see also Brief for Petitioners 22–23, and n. 2; 
Tr. of Oral Arg. 37–38.  In other words, the company claims 
a categorical exemption from a public accommodations law 
simply because the company sells expressive services.  The 
sweeping nature of this claim should have led this Court to
reject it. 

B 
The  First  Amendment  does  not  entitle  petitioners  to  a 
special  exemption  from  a  state  law  that  simply  requires 
them  to  serve  all  members  of  the  public  on  equal  terms.
Such a law does not directly regulate petitioners’ speech at
all, and petitioners may not escape the law by claiming an 
expressive  interest  in  discrimination.    The  First  Amend-
ment  likewise  does  not  exempt  petitioners  from  the  law’s