Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/22pdf/21-476_c185.pdf
Page Number: 46.0

14 

303 CREATIVE LLC v. ELENIS 

SOTOMAYOR, J., dissenting 

3 
Lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) people,
no less than anyone else, deserve that dignity and freedom.
The movement for LGBT rights, and the resulting expan-
sion of state and local laws to secure gender and sexual mi-
norities’  full  and  equal  enjoyment  of  publicly  available 
goods and services, is the latest chapter of this great Amer-
ican story.

LGBT people have existed for all of human history.  And 
as  sure  as  they  have  existed,  others  have  sought  to  deny
their existence, and to exclude them from public life.  Those 
who  would  subordinate  LGBT  people  have  often  done  so
with  the  backing  of  law.  For  most  of  American  history,
there were laws criminalizing same-sex intimacy.  Oberge-
fell  v.  Hodges,  576  U. S.  644,  660–661  (2015).    “Gays  and
lesbians were [also] prohibited from most government em-
ployment, barred from military service, excluded under im-
migration  laws,  targeted  by  police,  and  burdened  in  their 
rights to associate.”  Id., at 661.  “These policies worked to
create and reinforce the belief that gay men and lesbians”
constituted  “an  inferior  class.”    Brief  for  Organization  of 
American  Historians  as  Amicus  Curiae  in  Obergefell  v. 
Hodges, O. T. 2014, No. 14–556, p. 3. 

State-sponsored discrimination was compounded by dis-
crimination in public accommodations, though the two of-
ten went hand in hand.  The police raided bars looking for
gays and lesbians so often that some bars put up signs say-
ing, “ ‘We Do Not Serve Homosexuals.’ ”  Id., at 13 (quoting 
G. Chauncey, Why Marriage 8 (2004)).  LGBT discrimina-
tion in public accommodations has continued well into the 
21st century.  See UCLA School of Law Williams Institute, 
C. Mallory & B. Sears, Evidence of Discrimination in Public 
Accommodations Based on Sexual Orientation and Gender 
Identity (2016).

A social system of discrimination created an environment 
in which LGBT people were unsafe.  Who could forget the