Colorado Pays $1.5 Million For Violating Artist’s First Amendment Rights After Historic SCOTUS Case | Eastern NC Now

    Publisher's Note: This post appears here courtesy of the The Daily Wire. The author of this post is Mary Margaret Olohan.

    Colorado has agreed to pay over $1.5 million after violating the First Amendment rights of a graphic designer who took her case to the United States Supreme Court.

    The Court ruled in June that the state could not compel Lorie Smith and her design studio, 303 Creative, to create art that violates her religious beliefs. As a Christian, Smith believes that marriage should be between a man and a woman. Though she wanted to design wedding websites, Colorado's discrimination laws would have required her to create same-sex wedding websites.

    Smith, who was represented by lawyers from the Alliance Defending Freedom, asked the Supreme Court to say Colorado's discrimination law violated her First Amendment rights. Her case followed that of Jack Phillips, a cake designer persecuted by LGBTQ activists in Colorado for over a decade for attempting to only design cakes consistent with his religious beliefs.

    "After enduring Colorado's censorship for nearly seven years, I'm incredibly grateful for the work of my attorneys at Alliance Defending Freedom to bring my case to victory," Smith said in a statement on Tuesday. "As the Supreme Court said, I'm free to create art consistent with my beliefs without fear of Colorado punishing me anymore. This is a win not just for me but for all Americans-for those who share my beliefs and for those who hold different views."

    Alliance Defending Freedom CEO Kristen Waggoner said that the "government can't force Americans to say things they don't believe, and Colorado officials have paid and will continue to pay a high price when they violate this foundational freedom."

    "For the past 12 years, Colorado has targeted people of faith and forced them to express messages that violate their conscience and that advance the government's preferred ideology," she said. "First Amendment protections are non-negotiable. Billions of people around the world believe that marriage is the union of one man and one woman and that men and women are biologically distinct."


    "No government has the right to silence individuals for expressing these ideas or to punish those who decline to express different views," Waggoner added. "Political and cultural winds shift, but the freedom to speak without fear of censorship is a God-given constitutionally guaranteed right, essential for a flourishing society and self-governing people."

    In October, the Colorado Supreme Court dismissed a lawsuit brought by the same trans-identifying attorney who has brought cases against Phillips for over 12 years - Autumn Scardina, a man who identifies as a woman. Scardina first contacted Phillips in 2012, calling the cake-maker a hypocrite and a bigot, according to Alliance Defending Freedom. Scardina has requested that Phillips create cakes celebrating gender transitions and "Satan smoking Marijuana."

poll#180

Now that the public is allowed to know the truth regarding the Hunter Biden Laptop Scandal, after more that 2 1/2 years of deception by the corrupt Corporate Media Kabal, propropagandidats all, and the discredited Deep State, we have NOW learned that the infamous laptop is far less about the Biden Boy's fetish for pornography, narcotics and Russian whores, and far more about Hunter's pivotal role in the Biden Crime Syndicate's selling of deep access to our foreign adversaries, and to what extent it has compromised our national security: What is your opinion about this possible coordinated Treason?

  It is imperative that we know the truth of what may be the greatest scandal in our Republic's history, and all aforementioned parties prosecuted for their crimes against the People.

  Currently, our Two Tiered Justice System is constructed to protect all Democratic Socialists, their corrupt "Journalist" spokes-sheople, and their Deep State enablers ... so why bother.

  It is Donald Trump's fault.

  How can we be assured that the "Laptop" is real? Would NOT our standard journalists have investigated this issue thoroughly nearly 3 years ago if it was real?

537 total vote(s)     What's your Opinion?

poll#176

Considering the renewed and unequalled dishonesty in elected politicians, at all levels of governing, and their associative nefarious bureaucrats doing their corrupt bidding: What is your opinion of YOUR government, and what do you intend to do about it?

  Today's overall government is just fine, and I will continue to vote for politicians that make promises to suit my individual needs.

  Today's overall government is poor, but I will continue to endeavor to learn what is true from the the most honest of media, and pick those representatives that best represent what is good and decent.

  I spend quite a bit of time on Eastern NC NOW; so ... I am having a far easier time separating the proverbial "wheat from the chaff" in finding honorable citizens to support.

151 total vote(s)     What's your Opinion?