Web designer who sued for right to turn away LGBTQ clients gets laughed out of court

A web designer who sued her state because she didn’t want to make wedding websites for same-sex couples – even though she wasn’t in the business of making wedding websites for anyone – has lost in court.

“We must also consider the grave harms caused when public accommodations discriminate on the basis of race, religion, sex, or sexual orientation,” Judge Mark Beck Briscoe wrote for the majority of a three-judge panel of the Tenth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Denver. “Combatting such discrimination is, like individual autonomy, ‘essential’ to our democratic ideals.”

Related: Supreme Court rejects appeal from Christian florist who discriminated against gay couple

Lorie Smith and her company 303 Creative LLC sued Colorado over its anti-discrimination law, saying that banning her from discriminating against LGBTQ people is a violation of her First Amendment rights.

She sued over the same law that Masterpiece Cakeshop owner Jack Phillips took to the Supreme Court, but unlike Phillips, Smith hadn’t turned anyone away. Her 2016 lawsuit was a preemptive strike against the law backed by a religious right hate group.

The panel denied Smith’s appeal after…

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