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Page Number: 70

38 

303 CREATIVE LLC v. ELENIS 

SOTOMAYOR, J., dissenting 

died, the cemetery was willing to include those words, but 
not  the  words  that  described  Cynthia’s  relationship  to 
Sherry: “ ‘beloved life partner.’ ”  N. Knauer, Gay and Les-
bian Elders 102 (2011).  There are many such stories, too
many to tell here.  And after today, too many to come. 

I fear that the symbolic damage of the Court’s opinion is
done.  But that does not mean that we are powerless in the 
face  of  the  decision.    The  meaning  of  our  Constitution  is 
found not in any law volume, but in the spirit of the people 
who live under it.  Every business owner in America has a
choice  whether  to  live  out  the  values  in  the  Constitution. 
Make  no  mistake:  Invidious  discrimination  is  not  one  of 
them.  “[D]iscrimination in any form and in any degree has 
no justifiable part whatever in our democratic way of life.” 
Korematsu v. United States, 323 U. S. 214, 242 (1944) (Mur-
phy, J., dissenting).  “It is unattractive in any setting but it
is utterly revolting among a free people who have embraced 
the  principles  set  forth  in  the  Constitution  of  the  United
States.”  Ibid. 

The  unattractive  lesson  of  the  majority  opinion  is  this:
What’s mine is mine, and what’s yours is yours.  The lesson 
of the history of public accommodations laws is altogether 
different.  It is that in a free and democratic society, there
can be no social castes.  And for that to be true, it must be 
true in the public market.  For the “promise of freedom” is 
an  empty  one  if  the  Government  is  “powerless  to  assure
that a dollar in the hands of [one person] will purchase the 
same thing as a dollar in the hands of a[nother].”  Jones v. 
Alfred H. Mayer Co., 392 U. S. 409, 443 (1968).  Because the 
Court today retreats from that promise, I dissent.