re: Ketanji Brown Jackson “It’s a Wonderful Life” is Fodder For White Supremacists in Oral Arg

There is some sensationalism going on here with this headline, and you don't have to be a fan of Justice Jackson to see that. The 11th Circuit decision was based in part on the idea that a business cannot refuse to sell to LGBTQ folks. Jackson is clumsily playing off that, but I don't think it's fair to say she said the classic movie is "fodder for white supremacists.

But Jackson's analogy is nowhere close to what is going on with the website designer. The article quotes Gorsuch who frames the issue perfectly. The case is not about "who" is being sold to, it is about "what" the designer will be forced to engage in terms of her speech/expression. Example: Designer has a premade "wedding website kit" that sells for the low, low price of 49.95 and is available for couples to purchase and plug in names and dates to design their own wedding website. Designer must sell that product to Steve & Todd who are getting married in Boulder. No constitutional problem there. This does NOT mean that Steve & Todd can force the designer to create a tailor-made website for them because, as even the 11th Circuit recognized, doing so involves the designer's "pure speech" (and, I would argue, her exercise of religion). The state statute must yield to the First Amendment. This should be an easy case, and I hope that Kagan (the most principled of the the Court's three liberals) provides the vote to make it 7-2.