A Washington florist who has been fighting for years for a religious exemption to discriminate against LGBTQ people is again asking the Supreme Court to take up her case.
Barronelle Stutzman owns Arlene’s Flowers in Richland, Washington. In 2015, she was fined $1000 when she refused to sell flowers to a gay customer who was getting married. She appealed the decision, saying that she was Southern Baptist so being forced to sell gay people wedding flowers would violate her religious beliefs.
The Washington Supreme Court ruled against her, and the U.S. Supreme Court has already punted her case back to the state supreme court once. The Washington Supreme Court upheld the ruling against her.
Now she wants the U.S. Supreme Court to take her case again. And she’s being represented by the anti-LGBTQ hate group Alliance Defending Freedom. …
ADF is arguing that flower arrangements are a form of speech protected by the First Amendment, and therefore she should be allowed to refuse to sell flowers that will be used in “sacred events that violate her religious beliefs.”
In 2017, the Washington Supreme Court wrote in its opinion, “As Stutzman acknowledged at deposition, providing flowers for a wedding between Muslims would not necessarily constitute an endorsement of Islam, nor would providing flowers for an atheist couple endorse atheism.” …
“More than half a century ago, the court rejected as ‘patently frivolous’ the notion that owners’ religious beliefs free businesses to discriminate against customers,” she said, referring to a case where the Supreme Court rejected the idea of a religious exemption to anti-discrimination laws when it came to racist discrimination. …
ModerateMind
Article URL : https://www.lgbtqnation.com/2019/09/florist-wants-supreme-court-allow-discriminate-flowers-speech/