saying i don t want to serve somebody. melissa, let me bring you into the conversation, get your thoughts on this ruling. it is interesting. this was about an antidiscrimination law in colorado versus free speech rights. it wasn t having to do necessarily with religious rights here. and again, justices deciding for the web designer. yeah, that s exactly right, and kenji has explained it beautifully. free speech, there is a much broader range of exemptions you can offer individuals. this follows on the heels of dobbs last term where justice thomas noted he would be willing to consider i ve got to interrupt you, melissa, forgive me. we are going to laura jarrett with more information right now after she s been reading through this decision. laura.
now let s go back to julia ainsley with the details. reporter: that s right, this was a 6-3 gorsuch decision. the court siding with the web designer saying that she can refuse service to a gay couple for their wedding website design. it s unclear now, we re still reading through it, to see how this is different from other issues that have come before the supreme court like a cake maker, for example, who refused to provide a wedding cake for a gay couple. this issue came down to free speech because of the website. we re seeing how they re able to draw differences of why a wedding website would be different from a wedding cake. again, still reading through. for now they are siding with that web designer saying it is okay to refuse her services to a gay couple for her wedding website. that decision was authored by justice gorsuch. your reaction, kenji. i see it s a 6-3 decision.
major significance. melissa murray, you clerked for then judge sotomayor who wrote the dissent in this case. she s now justice sotomayor. and she writes 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. how significant and potentially breathtaking and broad-based could this ruling be? what kind of ripple effect could we see? i think this is a massive decision. again, kenji is right, it s unprecedented for the court to use its compelled speech doctrine to apply to circumstances like this when we re dealing with public accommodations laws. these laws are rife throughout the country. many jurisdictions have them as a means of ensuring that individuals are not subject to discrimination in the conduct of their daily lives and in commerce, and this would basically be a license for individuals to decide based on
of colorado in a democratic fashion determined was something that they wanted to abide by. they wanted to make public accommodations and businesses open to all comers. and the court here today says that the people don t matter. their wishes don t matter in that respect, and instead, one website designer can decide who she serves and when and can determine what kind of equality gay couples in colorado experience. kenji, i wonder is it normal for us to have this lengthy reading of the opinions and the dissents from the bench, or is this unique to these big controversial cases? yeah, definitely the latter, the big controversial cases get this kind of air time, and it s clear that justice sotomayor in particular is impassioned today as so she was yesterday in dissent. i m looking at elena s dissent, she talks about how every time you cut off a head, two more grow in its place.
women. now we re seeing it against the lgbtq community. so we re seeing a pattern. we re part of it. where does this stop? so what business can now deny myself and my wife access when we walk in. and i think they ve left that really broad. i haven t read the decision yet, but from the top line analysis of it, i think that this is an open license to discriminate against lgbtq people in america, which this court has signaled they want to roll back marriage. they want to attack the lgbtq community, and this is their first step in doing so. you had a chance, kenji to look through some of the decision at this point. does any of this stand out, can you talk to us about how narrow this decision is or how broad it is. i don t want to say anything definitive but it does appear justice gorsuch is putting it within the compelled affirmation line of cases. you can t force somebody to assay the pledge of allegiance,