- The Supreme Court ruled that a wedding website owner in Colorado has the right to refuse service to LGBTQ couples.
- But the alleged request that the case was centered on appears to be made up.
- The New Republic spoke to the "gay" man in the case, who says he's straight and married with children.
The Supreme Court ruled Thursday that the owner of a wedding website in Colorado can refuse to provide service to LGBTQ couples because it violates her religious beliefs.
But an alleged request cited in the case appears to be made up.
The website owner, Lorie Smith, said she got a request from a gay couple — "Stewart and Mike" — but The New Republic tracked down Stewart, who says he never asked her to make him a website.
Stewart is married to a woman, The New Republic reported.
"I wouldn't want anybody to … make me a wedding website?" he told The New Republic. "I'm married, I have a child — I'm not really sure where that came from. But somebody's using false information in a Supreme Court filing document."
The court's ruling in the case was 6-3, led by the conservative justices who now dominate the high court.
Justice Neil Gorsuch, who delivered the court's opinion, wrote that the First Amendment bans Colorado from "forcing a website designer to create expressive designs speaking messages with which the designer disagrees."
Justice Sonia Sotomayor, one of the three dissenting justices, wrote in her dissent that "today is a sad day in American constitutional law and in the lives of LGBT people."
She added that the court "declares that a particular kind of business, though open to the public, has a constitutional right to refuse to serve members of a protected class."