Story at a glance
- The U.S. Supreme Court opted not to hear the case of a Washington florist who would not provide flowers for a same-sex couple’s wedding.
- The Washington attorney general sued the florist and the Washington Supreme Court upheld the penalties in 2019.
- Both cases pit religious freedom against anti-discrimination laws, but legal experts have ruled the contexts of both cases differ.
On Friday, the U.S. Supreme Court decided against hearing an appeal filed by a Washington florist who was fined by the state for refusing to make a flower arrangement for a same-sex couple’s wedding.
Three of the six conservative justices — Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito and Neil Gorsuch — voted to hear the case, reported Reuters
The shop, Arlene’s Flowers, and florist Barronelle Stutzman refused to make a floral arrangement for Rober Ingersoll’s same-sex wedding with Curt Freed in 2013.
In 2019, the Washington state Supreme Court ruled against Arlene’s Flowers in a unanimous decision, saying the florist violated the Washington Law Against Discrimination (WLAD), the state’s anti-discrimination law, by declining to serve the couple due to their sexual orientation.
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Stutzman cited her right to free exercise of religion for declining to work with Ingersoll. The court ruled that Stutzman’s arguments and legal references did not have any bearing on the Washington laws against discrimination and that serving same-sex couples did not prohibit her from practicing her religion.
“The State of Washington bars discrimination in ‘public … accommodation[s]’ on the basis of ‘sexual orientation,’ ” the court wrote in a review following their ruling. “Discrimination based on same-sex marriage constitutes discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation. We therefore hold that the conduct for which Stutzman was cited and fined in this case—refusing her commercially marketed wedding floral services to Ingersoll and Freed because theirs would be a same-sex wedding—constitutes sexual orientation discrimination under the WLAD.”
The U.S. Supreme Court is upholding the Washington court’s ruling.
This follows a 2018 decision in favor of a Colorado baker who refused to make a wedding cake for a same-sex couple under the same pretenses Stutzman cited. The Washington state Supreme Court found that the two cases were too contextually different for Stutzman to use the 2018 ruling in her arguments, a decision that the U.S. Supreme Court may have upheld as well with this decision.
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