DENVER — After a seven-year long battle with the state that ultimately saw victory for website designer Lorie Smith, Colorado taxpayers will have to reimburse Smith more than $1.5 million in legal fees.
Smith, who won her appeal before the U.S. Supreme Court in June of last year, was awarded the fees after the high court ruled 6-3 in her favor that the First Amendment protected her Christian beliefs from complying with Colorado’s Anti-Discrimination Act.
That law prohibits businesses open to the public from discriminating against members of protected classes, which includes sexual orientation. However, Smith successfully argued that since her Christian beliefs say marriage is only between one man and one woman, the state could not force her to use her creative skills to produce websites for same-sex weddings, which she successfully argued amounts to government-compelled speech.
She initially asked for nearly $2 million. Reuters reports that the Colorado attorney general’s office declined to comment on the fee settlement. Smith’s attorneys, Alliance Defending Freedom disclosed the settlement in a court filing last week.
“Our clients Lorie Smith and her design studio, 303 Creative, prevailed at the US Supreme Court and achieved a landmark victory — a victory that helps to protect all Americans’ freedom of speech from government censorship and coercion,” Alliance senior counsel Bryan Neihart told Reuters previously.
Alliance Defending Freedom is a legal advocacy organization that defends clients in lawsuits related to religious liberty.
In its ruling the court said the constitutional right to free speech allows certain businesses to refuse to provide services for same-sex weddings. The three dissenting judges called it a “license to discriminate.”
“The First Amendment envisions the United States as a rich and complex place where all persons are free to think and speak as they wish, not as the government demands,” said Justice Neil Gorsuch, who wrote the majority opinion.
Justice Sonia Sotomayor disagreed, saying: “Today, the Court, for the first time in its history, grants a business open to the public a constitutional right to refuse to serve members of a protected class.”
However, Smith is actually not the first Colorado business owner to successfully challenge the law.
In 2018 Masterpiece Cakeshop owner Jack Phillips won a similar, decade-long legal battle after he refused to make a wedding cake for a same sex marriage. Phillips won that battle, but ended up back in court this year after being targeted by a transgender activist, and refusing to make a cake to celebrate a gender transition.
That complaint was initially dropped, but then refiled. The Colorado Supreme Court heard arguments in June. Alliance Defending Freedom also represented Phillips in both his first case as well as this current one.
