The city of Louisville, Kentucky, has agreed to pay $800,000 in attorney fees to settle a case with a Christian photographer who fought to protect her religious and free speech rights over the years of litigation. Louisville ultimately spent a fortune to force Chelsey Nelson to photograph same sex marriages under its nondiscrimination laws. When combined with its own litigation costs, the case likely cost the city and the courts millions to deny Nelson her constitutional rights.
In prior columns, academic articles, and my book, “The Indispensable Right, I discussed the never-ending litigation targeting Jack Phillips, the Christian baker who declined to make cakes that violated his religious beliefs.
The case went all the way to the Supreme Court in what many of us hoped would be a final resolution of this conflict. I had long criticized the framing of the case (and other cases) under the religious clauses rather than treating it as a matter of free speech. In the end, the Supreme Court punted in a maddening 2018 decision that technically ruled in favor of Phillips based on a finding that the Commission showed anti-religious bias against Phillips.
In 2023, the Supreme Court delivered a major victory for free speech in 303 Creative v. Elenis, when it ruled that Lorie Smith, a Christian website designer, could refuse to provide services for a same-sex marriage. Justice Neil Gorsuch wrote, “the framers designed the Free Speech Clause of the First Amendment to protect the ‘freedom to think as you will and to speak as you think.’ … They did so because they saw the freedom of speech ‘both as an end and as a means.’”
In the September ruling, the court cited 303 Creative:
“That 2023 decision confirmed this Court’s 2022 interpretation of the First Amendment to bar the City of Louisville from enforcing an ordinance prohibiting wedding photographer Chelsey Nelson from stating her traditional (now dissenting) views on traditional marriage or declining to participate in those ceremonies.”
Louisville is only the latest blue city to spend millions trying to force individuals to create products — from cakes to wedding albums — that violate their religious, speech, and associational rights.
The settlement is a victory not just for Nelson but also for the Alliance Defending Freedom.
Why would you want someone that totally disagrees with you to photograph your wedding or bake your wedding cake? Even if you force them you are not getting their best work. Obviously they pick these people for a political reason because no one in their right mind wants to turn their wedding into a political football. It’s just stupid and the state supporting it is even more stupid. The award should have been millions to put a stop to this kind of nonsense.
It’s just another tactic to keep the revolution going.
Gays Are Nothing New
If you’re under 50, gays have been in the open most of your life. It’s not like gays are a new issue that takes time to accept.
What’s more, Louisville Kentucky has been a medium size city for 150 years. It’s current population is more than 600,000 (including the whole county). That’s not so small that natives haven’t known any gays.
So if you’re a professional, or merchant, in Louisville Kentucky, you should be okay with gays from a business standpoint. That’s not too much to ask in 2020’s!
This idea that you can use Christianity as excuse to refuse your services to gays is form of Jim Crow. Though it’s perversely promoted as ‘religious freedom’.
Refusing services, based on sexual identity, doesn’t sound Christian to me. It sounds like someone who can’t cope with the 21st Century
Would Christ really say, “Don’t do business with them!”
That’s no Christ I know.
Nothing in this case turned on whether gays are ‘new,’ whether Louisville merchants have met gay neighbors, or how you or I think Christ would handle a customer.
The question was whether the state can force a citizen to create custom expressive content that celebrates a message she rejects. The Supreme Court has now said, in so many words, that it cannot. That is not ‘Jim Crow,’ it is the First Amendment. A photographer who declines to tell a particular story does not bar anyone from a hotel room or a lunch counter; she refuses to lend her voice and craft to a ceremony she cannot in conscience affirm.
You may think a good Christian would make a different choice. The Constitution leaves that to her, not to you and not to Louisville.
It’s their own choice who they wish to do business with, that’s the rub. Government cannot force their ideals on free people, religious aspects or not. Now off to the Bathhouses in search of Barry with you.
You misunderstand the case. It is not about refusing service to someone else because they’re gay, but about refusing to use one’s expressive work to create a message one disagrees with.
1A religion is to prevent a a Theocracy from establishment btw. The founders created a democratic republic. To ensure that prevention was written in 1A. Theocracies are totalitarian governments as are monarchies totalitarian as is communism.
Free exercise has gotten people such stellar examples as Jimmy swaggart and Tammy Faye and Jim. The free exercise portion was for the individual and may I say the cake shop is not a church. And may I say lgbt marriage has no philosophical base except I exist and I will.
The Constitution holds enlightens ideal of reason and free will. The major portion of 1A is prevention of theocracies as we see in the world today in backward portions of the world and nearly total eclipse of free will.
That’s all. Ridiculous
It’s about money. Just hand out buckets of it. There’s 8 billion people with their hands out.
8 BILLION. Then there’s the OCD moslems praying 5 x Per day.
Gbye
As a Christian plumber, I refuse to service Jewish homes. If they won’t accept Jesus Christ as their lord and savior, I don’t want to enter their house.
Nice try, but your example is not on-point. Plumbing work is not speech. It does not inherently express a message. Therefore, any law mandating non-discrimination in your selection of private clients (assuming one even exists), is not limited in the same way by the First Amendment.
The term ‘Christian’ has become so politicized that a high ratio of people under 40 automatically link ‘Christian’ to ‘conservative’. It shouldn’t be that way. But it is.
“Plumbing work is not speech.”
The obtuse commenter inadvertently made a valid point. Regardless of whether pluming work is “speech” (you are correct, it obviously is not) why should a plumber not be at liberty to choose who he will and will not do work for, based on any criteria he pleases? Do you own that plumber’s labor such that you are entitled to dictate such a mandate to him? Does anyone else except the plumber own his own labor? If you answer “yes” to either of those questions, I will take that as an admission that you are a collectivist and a Marxist. no other rational judgement would be possible.
“plumbing work”
Do you say the same for any person who refuses to accept Christ as their Savior? Or is this only for Jews?
Do you refuse to enter the house of anyone who refuses to accept Christ as their savior? Or is this only for Jews?
Just shut up. It’s my last nerve.
and how/who determines if “they’ve accepted JC as their lord and savior”?? Do you grill all potential clients upfront? Do you ask when they first call for an appt? Or when you’re already in their house? What about atheists? What about Muslims? What about Buddhists? Man, the minute a plumber (or anyone) started asking me such personal questions, he’d be out my front door with a boot in his rear.
Shabbat shalom everyone 🎉🎊🍾🍷🍞
The entire attack on noncompliant service businesses is despicable. The Lefties are insane and need to be treated as such.
My take on the Philips case is that his storefront and its products are open to all.
His right to refuse contract work is absolute and he doesn’t even need to offer a reason.
It seems the Lefties want it both ways: reparations for forced labor and for ed labor for those who disagree with them.
Hard NO, lunatics
Not much of a victory for the taxpayers that fund this stupidity.
Voters get the government they deserve. People have to open their eyes, find out what their government is doing, and vote in a more infomred manner. If they’re lazy, they’re going to be funding stupidity, as you correctly phrased it.
I’m with the commenter who said lawyers cook up these cases for money. 800 thou is a lot of potatoes. If I were an unethical lawyer I’d stage this stuff too. It’s like the lawyer Crump always shows up. There’s nothing protected about marriage. It’s quite mutable. Targetted Christians, target some moslems and mix it up.
Yep
You just said, you are not a lawyer…
No, just a human. There’s a lot of unethical behavior going on fyi.
And you are BOZO?
An ethical human unless there’s a point of ethics I am ignorant of that exists somewhere. I too have a blind spot due to the curvature of my eye. God made the eye so presumably God made the blind spot too. The best design are eyes that aren’t too deeply set and without a bulbous brow line obscuring what’s above, in addition.
Censored. Darren, you’re fag.
K, are you asking (BOZO) If I’m biased? Yes, I’m biased. The key for me is knowing the bias and then applying the law even if it means my bias cannot be accommodated.
I, along with most people I know, am thoroughly sick of privately-owned businesses who think they can impose THEIR beliefs and values on potential customers whose lifestyle they don’t agree with. Baking a cake for an LGBTQ couple or taking wedding photographs does NOT infringe on their exercise of religion. If you don’t want to offer your services to anyone and everyone who is a member of the general public, then don’t go into business. Go practice your religion in church and don’t try to force others to live according to your rules.
Meanwhile, in important news that DOES involve infringement on Constitutional rights, Trump is trying to squelch pro Palestinian protests against Israel’s genocidal activities in Gaza on campuses by threatening to withhold federal funds. Humm….I wonder if the $100 M donation by Miriam Edelson has anything to do with this:
“Medical schools at Ohio State University, the University of California, San Diego, and Stanford University said on Thursday they were notified about the federal probes first reported by the New York Times. Ohio State University shared with Reuters the letter that it got and which was dated Wednesday.
President Donald Trump has threatened to withhold federal funds from universities over issues including pro-Palestinian protests against Israel’s assault on Gaza, diversity initiatives, climate programs and transgender policies.
The government’s crackdown has been criticized over concerns that it curbs academic freedom, free speech and due process, while its efforts to freeze funds have faced legal and judicial roadblocks.”
AND, Trump is demanding a gold “commemorative coin” with his face on it and putting his fat, ugly jowly face on paper currency in honor of the US’s 250 anniversary. AND, the pathetic loser Republicans dreamed up a new, fake “America First” award for Trump–gold, of course. While Iranians are getting bombed, Americans are forced to stand in TSA lines for hours, the stock market is slipping, and TSA workers are forced to work without pay, Trump is in Florida, golfing. He never did care about the Americans in hours-long lines at airports–announcing that he will divert funds to cover TSA salaries. While it’s not clear that he has the power to do this—why didn’t he do it sooner, before Spring Break? His poll numbers keep slipping to a new low record, and yesterday, with the world watching, he went on a rant about Sharpie pens, claiming they cost $5 apiece. The actual retail price at Staples is about 75 cents apiece. He claimed that children don’t know what a pen is for and that the government was paying $1,000 for ball point pens
Gigi, you have so little understanding, I really do feel sorry for you. A private businessperson whose product is an expressive activity protected by the First Amendment has the right to be free of compelled speech. You people on the left assume the government will always be left-wing, trying to get conservatives to say left-wing things. You never stop to consider, what if in a deep red state the government coerces a liberal cake shop owner to bake a cake saying “Homosexuality is a sin” or “Unborn babies deserve to live.” You never stop to consider that, do you? The proverb says, if you roll a stone, it will roll back on you. You want to roll a boulder over all conservatives using the coercive power of the state to force them to say things they don’t believe, but you never stop to think: if that conservative person has no 1A protection against compelled speech, what will happen when a government I disagree with tries to make a liberal business owner say things that person disagrees with; they too will have no 1A protection against such coercion.
There is no such thing as a product being “an expressive activity”. Neither a cake or a photograph is an expression of speech. Explain just HOW a decorated cake is “speech” of the person who decorated it. It’s just another example of the contorted reasoning used to try to come up with a way for religious zealots to try to force their views on others to prove their self-righteous moral superiority and piety, AND it’s BS. It’s no different than businesses that used to display a sign that said “we solicit white patrons only”. That is no longer allowed–so they just treat customers of color crappy. I’ve seen it first-hand. There is no end to the lengths that “Christians” will go to shove their beliefs down others’ throats. They want to coerce schools to require prayer, which they used to do, to put up the 10 commandments in court rooms and schools–they just don’t get the fact that government and religion must be separate for there to be freedom as our founders intended. According to “Constitution.co”:
“James Madison and Thomas Jefferson advocated for separating church and state. Madison’s “Memorial and Remonstrance Against Religious Assessments” opposed government-supported religion. Jefferson’s Virginia Bill for Religious Freedom reinforced this separation.”
I found an old public school song book in a curio shop recently–copyright 1950– and it contained the original Pledge of Allegiance that omitted the phrase “under God”. Not everyone believes there IS a God–and freedom to hold that belief is their Constitutional right. Children of agnostic and athiest families should not be required to “pledge allegiance” to “one nation under God”. THAT is “coercion”–not baking a cake or taking wedding photos. A wedding cake doesn’t contain any language at all about about sexuality or abortion or even the names of the couple. And, stop calling me “Gigi”.
Gigi – artistic design is an expressive activity, it communicates ideas. It’s protected under the First Amendment. “Speech” as that word is used by 1A is not limited to people using their mouth and voice to create words audible words. It is much broader than that. It includes the written word, works of art, music, and anything capable of conveying a message. Creativity in making a cake, a website, a series of photograms, paintings, songs, etc., are all protected expressive activities under 1A. Check with the left-leaning ACLU, you’ll see they agree.
First Amendment protection is not limited to “pure speech” — books, newspapers, leaflets, and rallies. It also protects “symbolic speech” — nonverbal expression whose purpose is to communicate ideas. In its 1969 decision in Tinker v. Des Moines, the Court recognized the right of public school students to wear black armbands in protest of the Vietnam War. In 1989 (Texas v. Johnson) and again in 1990 (U.S. v. Eichman), the Court struck down government bans on “flag desecration.” Other examples of protected symbolic speech include works of art, T-shirt slogans, political buttons, music lyrics and theatrical performances.
https://www.aclu.org/documents/freedom-expression
AI Overview: Under the First Amendment, “speech” is defined extremely broadly in terms of creative activities, extending far beyond spoken or written words to include almost anything the human creative impulse can produce. The U.S. Supreme Court has interpreted this to mean that artistic expression—including paintings, music, films, and live performances—is “unquestionably shielded” from government censorship. -ACLU
On your own terms, you are arguing against the Supreme Court’s doctrine, not describing it. For decades the Court has treated ‘speech’ to include not only words, but also expressive conduct and artistic work, from flag burning to parade floats to customized graphics and websites. In 303 Creative the Court took that settled line one step further and held that when the state forces someone to create custom expressive content for a wedding, it is compelling that person’s speech. That may not fit your intuition about ‘just a cake’ or ‘just a photograph,’ but it is exactly how the First Amendment analysis now operates, and it is why these cases are not remotely the same as a lunch counter sign saying ‘whites only,’ which involves denial of standard services rather than conscription of an individual’s expression.
Are you a constitutional lawyer?
Nope. I am something more basic and more important in a republic: a citizen who can read, think, and take responsibility for understanding the Constitution. If only ‘constitutional lawyers’ were allowed to discuss Supreme Court decisions, there would be no point in any of us being here.
So you are not a lawyer in any way, shape or form. Yet you spread BS here. Discuss? You have background in constitutional law, do you. Right? So you just make stuff up, trying to sound smart. But you’re a fraud. Is that about right? Now tell us you’re a constitutional scholar.
Take responsibility for understanding the Constitution? What a load of cra..p.
The Constitution is understandable by common people. Lawyers have created libraries of laws when they should not have. It’s a case of feathering your nest. IMO. The lgbt couple wanting photos should have not harassed the photographer. They were thoughtless in disregarding the photographers religious beliefs. Simple as that. Being a lawyer is unnecessary.
You really aren’t that perceptive are you. I never said I was a lawyer. I said I was a citizen who can read, which already puts me several steps ahead of you in this exchange. You keep yelling ‘fraud’ at anyone who quotes the actual text of statutes and Supreme Court decisions because you cannot be bothered to learn what they say. That is not debate. It is intellectual laziness with a bad attitude.
Let’s say I’m a person belong to group X, an assembly. I want to buy food but am denied the food because of group X membership. Clearly illegal?
I do not believe ‘trolls’ are a protected class, so this mysterious assembly of Group X trolls can be denied food legally. Work harder, pay attention, learn something, and you might eventually qualify for a more respectable assembly. Good luck.
OLLY,
Excellent take down of the lazy one!
You may not be a lawyer, but in discussions with you, OldManFromKS, Estovir, S. Meyer, Lin, WiseOldLawyer and many others who are not annonys, I have learned more than a thing or two.
You are a victim of the elite. Thank goodness non-lawyers can grasp the consequences of those lawyers who try to manipulate the law rather than use it properly. Then again, you are one of those lame-brained anonymi.
OLLY adds more in one post than you do in a year.
Meyer, apparently OLLY’s grasp of the law and the Constitution is as poor as your grasp of the English language.
Do I have to remind you, yet again, that “anonymi” is not a word that is found anywhere in the English language. “Anonymous” is an adjective that cannot be pluralized. “Anonymous” is a descriptive term that describes the state of being unnamed. “Anonymous is NOT a noun meaning a person who is unnamed. The correct word for a person who is unnamed is “anonym”, which can be pluralized to “anonyms”.
If you are unable to use the English language correctly, then there is not a lot of point in trying to understand your worthless comments.
The same can be said for OLLY’s comments.
Sigmund the Fraud, I write to convey meaning, while you do so to parade your grandiloquence while impressing no one. Anonymi has meaning on this blog, whether or not formally accepted by a dictionary. While others understand what I mean, you are a gasbag who provides nothing but vacuous ideas.
Final Grade: Self-confessed Liar and Puerile, Pedantic Gasbag
S. Meyer,
Well said!
Generally, the annonys are some of the most useless, lazy non-citizens around.
Anon, the reason the founders reserved religion is to ensure the United States would not become a theocracy. They ensured it would not become a totalitarian monarchy by it political system. Theocracies are totalitarian. A totalitarian monarchy was not uncommon and exists today.
^^ typo—> its
Is it ensure or insure 😂.
The framers tied up ends as democracy by reps and disallowed theocracy formation and monarchy by design. Theocracies and monarchies are totalitarian systems. Communism is totalitarian, the feds are limited and states, too.
What of the economy?
Compelled speech? How about compelled commerce. Receiving stolen goods for resale? It’s commerce.
If dems are back in the CRA will include any and all commerce for any reason of any product or service. The commerce stands alone- the big cheese. Title IX and others will include trans as will CRA and all handicap conditions. The rule has been mitigation and accommodation, mutable and immutable.
Omfk, the targets of CRA were blacks and Jewish people by creed both identifiable by genetics. These 2 groups have been targets of gross discrimination historically. Christians are being targetted but it’s not genetics, it’s BS.
I see politics as assembly and redress, 1A.
^^^ civil rights act (CRA) can be changed by simple congressional majority vote. Of course they’ll start filibuster so begin right away.
“civil rights act (CRA) can be changed by simple congressional majority vote. Of course they’ll start filibuster so begin right away.”
The blatantly unconstitutional parts of the CRA could, and should, be overturned by court decision, probably by SCOTUS, but the sleazy, narcissistic jerks (of all party stripes) currently in power have no interest in letting that happen, as it would potentially cost them at the ballot box, and, by reducing the scope of Fedgov, also potentially reduce their own power. They cannot allow either of those things to happen, regardless of what lies they might mouth in a campaign speech.
Good one
I, along with most people I know, am thoroughly sick of privately-owned businesses who think..
Open you own business and invite all cretins…
You just posted that again …
It’s just not on the menu. Steak houses carry beefsteak. Don’t ask for chicken chow mein and then pitch a fit. People drive cars. That doesn’t mean they’re for hire as taxis either.
Most of these cases are ceremonial cakes, photographs etc. The key is ceremonial. The baker will have a dessert cake anyone can buy or the photographer may take passports photos.
Lgbt were not denied dessert nor photos. Lgbt attempted to deny the tradesmen freedom of religion on the otherhand.
“Lgbt were not denied dessert nor photos”
And even if they had been denied, so what? Do you own the labor of those professionals, such that you are entitled to prescribe to them for whom they must work? Does society at large own their labor? Do you understand that those premises embody the very essence of Marxist collectivism?
As with Masterpiece Cake Shop and 303 Creative, bullies who try to make an example out of anyone who dissents from left-wing cultural dogma often find that precedent is created in a way they did not intend – in this cae, upholding the First Amendment’s ban on compelled speech. Colorado unintentially did Chelsey Nelson a favor. A similar dynamic occurs in other areas such as with Second Amendment rights.
You are confused as to who the bullies are–the baker who tries to claim that baking and decorating a cake is “speech”, which would be infringed upon if they had to provide a cake for a gay couple. The same is true for a photographer. Tell me–could a school photographer refuse to photograph black, Asian or brown children? If not, how is that different from refusing to photograph a same-sex couple, and how or why is it any of the photographer’s business what the sexual orientation of a couple is?
Gigi – it’s the message that counts. Under 1A, the government may not coerce a person into making an expression of celebration for a thing that person disagrees with. Think about it for a few minutes, you’ll see.
Tell me–could a school photographer refuse to photograph black, Asian or brown children?
The business owners in these cases are private, not on the payroll of a public agency such as a school.
School photographers are also private–they are not on the payroll of the school or any other public agency. Maybe you’ve never bought school pictures, but there are various packages available, which you are not required to purchase, but if you do want to purchase some, you have to pay the company that took the photos. So, what would happen if you got some MAGA who believes that black children are “apes”, like Trump thinks the Obamas are? Maybe they think that blacks aren’t human, according to their religion. Making a cake is not an “expression” of anything, and neither is taking a picture. Cake decorating comes out of a catalogue–so it really isn’t even an artistic endeavor, and neither is pointing a camera and pushing the shutter.
GiGi, this is not a close call that reasonable minds are still sorting out. You are simply refusing to accept a clear First Amendment line of decisions because you do not like where they come out. The Court has already held that custom wedding work can be expressive and that the state cannot force an artist to create celebratory content she rejects. You keep insisting that “a cake is just a cake” and “a photo is just a shutter click” as if repetition could overwrite that law. It cannot, which is why this entire line of cases has consistently blown up your position.
OLLY,
Gigi is a product of MSM leftist dogma. I applaud your efforts to inform and educate her, but this is a person who blindly believes the likes of Rachel Maddow and anything on CNN or MSNOW.
It is like talking to a wall.
The upside, is your comments and OldManFromKS comments illuminate how the SC ruling and this one are correct in the terms of the 1stA.
Gigi – the term “school photographer” suggests the person is either on the school’s payroll, or at least operates under a contract with the school. The contract will spell out what they are allowed to do, and not do. If they don’t like it, they don’t have to enter into the contract. That is completely separate from a private business, under no contract with any government entity, deciding which expressive conduct they will engage in. At this point, you’re just being obstinate by trying to distract with irrelevant examples. Your obstinate refusal to accept reality does not negate that reality. Your hatred of 1A protections, does not make them go away. Your position would be completely rejected by the ACLU, one of the foremost left-leaning public interest law firms in the country. Not to mention by the Supreme Court. You are as far away from responsible thought on this topic as Pluto is form Earth.
It’s a firmly held religious belief. Imo it stems from be fruitful and multiply as was the observation of every living thing on earth biological imperative. It’s foundational.
^^^ Additionally history is very long and records are kept by various cultures. It was noted long ago that such activity resulted in diseases. The idea of burning in heck is still practiced today especially in Africa when Ebola shows up the villages are burned to stop the spread if the disease. Behaviors associated with lgbt have a long history of disease. The ancient cities of S and G were burned and we get heckfire and brimstone from it.
It’s just common observation and it’s been conflated with magic and superstition. God probably prefers humans learning from error but many don’t. An all powerful God has no need of punishment when humans punish themselves.
IMO Kant went to great lengths to prove reason and will.
How is any of that relevant? It is not. This is a free speech case. It has nothing to do with religion.
So now, ‘Go woke, go broke.’, is applicable to entire states? It’s time to stop electing children or their emotional counterparts to office, and that may mean a longer road than we anticipated for the conscious among us.
It should not be a big deal for ANY business to say, ‘No’, to a potential client or customer; that is their prerogative; in a free market, you can take your dollars elsewhere. Then again, we are dealing with certain generations for whom that no is a foreign concept, personal indignation is all that matters. That can be understood to a point for the irrationally emotionally immature, but at the state level?
Is bankruptcy not enough? What will it take to get through to these ideological robots? Total and complete collapse? If this isn’t mental illness, I don’t know what is.
And additionally, if there were anything legitimately ‘righteous’ about any of this, instead of a butt-hurt temper tantrum, it’d be fine. There is not, just the personal butt-hurt. Pretty tired of woke initiatives designed solely to make the initiators feel better, personally, about themselves. Narcissism to a T, and also a false construct that would not withstand the gentlest of winds.
Rep. Sam Graves (R-MO) announced on Friday that he’s retiring from Congress, joining a large group of Republican leaders exiting Capitol Hill.
He is now the 35th Republican member of Congress to retire this year as Democrats eye taking back the majority of the House and Senate this fall.
Graves, the chairman of the House Committee on Transportation, was among dozens of GOP lawmakers leaving without seeking reelection as Republicans anticipate a potentially challenging midterm election this fall.
Thoughts of rats and ships come to mind …………..
What the f—k does that have to do with the article, moron troll?
Ask Olly…
Republicans are weary of death threats. Life is too short for that. It’s the undoing of the federal government. States will eventually need armed resistance. It’s happening on the left and right but ultimately it’s finished. Democrats are responsible and freedom in this world is history.
Hear no evil, speak no evil, see no evil.
It seems no matter where you look these days’ governments run by liberal leftist Scallywag’s are assaulting Common Sense, the Constitution and basic human decency. They have no room for us, were just plebs. Patricians leading the way to the underworld where flames of despair flicker engulfing your soul.
How many times since 1964 has the Civil Rights Act been changed? Something about standing here…
Throw the case out at the lowest level.
Throw the case out at the lowest level.
≈======
I agree 100 💯 %%… I’m really shocked at how some judges, who have been through law school, practiced law a minimum of 10 years and then get “experience” on the bench, can allow crystal clear protected free speech cases to make it out if the pleading/initial stages. They are getting it wrong on so MANY cases like this. The First Amendment is arguably the most important right we have in America. how do they screw it up so badly so often?
Marriage isn’t in the CRA 1964. It’s not protected. This needs nothing more than a statement of- I don’t want to.
In my 50 years of legal practice I have concluded that local governments are the worst litigants; they refuse to see reality and continue litigation long after it is obvious they are in the wrong or violating the rights of folks.
Truth ⬆️⬆️⬆️⬆️
And I’m pretty sure I have the answer to that; they’re spending other people’s money…. OPM