303 Creative LLC v. Elenis

Lorie Smith is a website designer, running her business as 303 Creative, LLC. registered in Colorado. Smith had been successful in developing websites for others and wanted to move into making wedding announcement websites, but as a practicing Christian, she knew ahead of time that it would be against her faith to make sites for non-heterosexual marriages, wanting to include a notice on her business website to alert users to this and willing to help such clients find other potential designers that could help them instead.[1]

Before implementing this, Smith discovered that such a notice would violate the Colorado anti-discrimination state laws that were amended in 2008, which prevents public businesses from discriminating against gay people as well as making statements to that effect. Smith sued Colorado in 2016 in the United States District Court for the District of Colorado, seeking to block enforcement of the anti-discrimination law. The district court awaited for the result of the Supreme Court case Masterpiece Cakeshop v. Colorado Civil Rights Commission which also dealt with the same anti-discrimination law. As Masterpiece was ruled in 2018 on more narrow grounds, the district court ruled against Smith in 2019, as Colorado had yet to investigate Smith and thus there was no evidence that she had engaged in discrimination.[2] Smith appealed to the United States Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit, which upheld the district court decision in a 2–1 ruling. In the majority ruling, the Tenth Circuit held the antidiscrimination law satisfied strict scrutiny under the First Amendment to the United States Constitution, deepening a circuit split with decisions issued by the Arizona Supreme Court and the United States Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit.[3] Chief Judge Timothy Tymkovich dissented in the Tenth's decision, writing "the majority takes the remarkable — and novel — stance that the government may force Ms. Smith to produce messages that violate her conscience."[1]

Smith filed a petition for a writ of certiorari, which the Supreme Court accepted in February 2022 to likely be heard in the 2022–2023 term. While the petition sought additional clarification related to the Free Exercise clause and on whether Employment Division v. Smith should be overturned, the Supreme Court limited the case to the question of whether Colorado's law violates the Free Speech Clause of the First Amendment.[3]