Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/22pdf/21-476_c185.pdf
Page Number: 38

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303 CREATIVE LLC v. ELENIS 

SOTOMAYOR, J., dissenting 

Grief stricken, and now isolated and humiliated, the family
desperately  searches  for  another  funeral  home  that  will
take the body.  They eventually find one more than 70 miles 
away.  See  First  Amended  Complaint  in  Zawadski  v. 
Brewer  Funeral  Services,  Inc.,  No.  55CI1–17–cv–00019 
(C. C. Pearl River Cty., Miss., Mar. 7, 2017), pp. 4–7.4  This 
ostracism,  this  otherness,  is  among  the  most  distressing 
feelings that can be felt by our social species.  K. Williams, 
Ostracism, 58 Ann. Rev. Psychology 425, 432–435 (2007). 

Preventing the “unique evils” caused by “acts of invidious 
discrimination  in  the  distribution  of  publicly  available
goods, services, and other advantages” is a compelling state 
interest “of the highest order.”  Roberts, 468 U. S., at 624, 
628; see Board of Directors of Rotary Int’l v. Rotary Club of 
Duarte,  481  U. S.  537,  549  (1987).    Moreover,  a  law  that 
prohibits only such acts by businesses open to the public is
narrowly tailored to achieve that compelling interest.  The 
law  “responds  precisely  to  the  substantive  problem  which 
legitimately  concerns  the  State”:  the  harm  from  status-
based  discrimination  in  the  public  marketplace.    Roberts, 
468 U. S., at 629 (internal quotation marks omitted).

This last aspect of a public accommodations law deserves
special  emphasis:  The  law  regulates  only  businesses  that 
choose to sell goods or services “to the general public,” e.g., 
Va.  Code  Ann.  §2.2–3904,  or  “to  the  public,”  e.g.,  Mich. 
Comp. Laws §37.2301.  Some public accommodations laws, 

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4 The  men  in  this  story  are  Robert  “Bob”  Huskey  and  John  “Jack” 
Zawadski.  Bob and Jack were a loving couple of 52 years.  They moved 
from California to Colorado to care for Bob’s mother, then to Wisconsin 
to  farm  apples  and  teach  special  education,  and  then  to  Mississippi  to 
retire.  Within weeks of this Court’s decision in Obergefell v. Hodges, 576 
U. S. 644 (2015), Bob and Jack got married.  They were 85 and 81 years 
old on their wedding day.  A few months later, Bob’s health took a turn. 
He died the following spring.  When Bob’s family was forced to find an
alternative funeral home more than an hour from where Bob and Jack 
lived, the lunch in Bob’s memory had to be canceled.  Jack died the next 
year.