Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/20pdf/19-123_g3bi.pdf
Page Number: 103

4 

FULTON v. PHILADELPHIA 

GORSUCH, J., concurring in judgment 

clients (students) and employees (faculty).  And if they can 
qualify as public accommodations under the state statute,
it isn’t exactly clear why foster agencies cannot.  What does 
the majority have to say about this problem?  Again, silence.
If  anything,  the  majority’s  next  move  only  adds  to  the
confusion.  It denies cooking up any of these arguments on 
its own.  It says it merely means to “agree with CSS’s posi-
tion . . . that its ‘foster services do not constitute a “public 
accommodation”  under  the  City’s  Fair  Practices  Ordi-
nance.’ ”  Ante, at 13 (quoting App. to Pet. for Cert. 159a). 
But  CSS’s  cited  “position”—which  comes  from  a  letter  it 
sent  to  the  City  before  litigation  even  began—includes
nothing  like  the  majority’s  convoluted  chain  of  reasoning
involving a separate state statute.  Id., at 159a–160a.  In-
stead, CSS’s letter contends that the organization’s services
do not qualify as “public accommodations” because they are
“only available to at-risk children who have been removed 
by the state and are in need of a loving home.”  Ibid.  The 
majority tells us with assurance that  it “agree[s] with” this
position, adding that it would be “incongru[ous]” to “dee[m] 
a private religious foster agency a public accommodation.” 
Ante, at 12. 

What to make of all this?  Maybe this part of the majority
opinion should be read only as reaching for something—an-
ything—to support its curious separate-statute move.  But 
maybe the majority means to reject the district court’s ma-
jor  premise  after  all—suggesting  it  would  be  incongruous 
for public accommodations laws to qualify as generally ap-
plicable under Smith because they do not apply to everyone.
Or maybe the majority means to invoke a canon of consti-
tutional avoidance: Before concluding that a public accom-
modations law is generally applicable under Smith, courts 
must ask themselves whether it  would be “incongru[ous]” 
to apply that law to religious groups.  Maybe all this ambi-
guity is deliberate, maybe not.  The only thing certain here