303 Creative LLC v. Elenis

Summary

The First Amendment prohibits Colorado from forcing a website designer to create expressive designs speaking messages with which the designer disagrees.

Text

PRELIMINARY PRINT 
Volume 600 U. S. Part 1 
Pages 570–640 
OFFICIAL REPORTS 
OF 
THE SUPREME COURT 
June 30, 2023 
REBECCA A. WOMELDORF 
reporter of decisions 
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[email protected], of any typographical or other formal errors.

570 OCTOBER TERM, 2022 
Syllabus 
303 CREATIVE LLC et al. v. ELENIS et al. 
certiorari to the united states court of appeals for 
the tenth circuit 
No. 21–476. Argued December 5, 2022—Decided June 30, 2023 
Lorie Smith wants to expand her graphic design business, 303 Creative 
LLC, to include services for couples seeking wedding websites. But Ms. 
Smith worries that Colorado will use the Colorado Anti-Discrimination 
Act to compel her—in violation of the First Amendment—to create web-
sites celebrating marriages she does not endorse. To clarify her rights, 
Ms. Smith fled a lawsuit seeking an injunction to prevent the State 
from forcing her to create websites celebrating marriages that defy her 
belief that marriage should be reserved to unions between one man and 
one woman. 
CADA prohibits all “public accommodations” from denying “the full 
and equal enjoyment” of its goods and services to any customer based 
on his race, creed, disability, sexual orientation, or other statutorily enu-
merated trait. Colo. Rev. Stat. § 24–34–601(2)(a). The law defnes 
“public accommodation” broadly to include almost every public-facing 
business in the State. § 24–34–601(1). Either state offcials or private 
citizens may bring actions to enforce the law. §§ 24–34–306, 24–34– 
602(1). And a variety of penalties can follow any violation. 
Before the district court, Ms. Smith and the State stipulated to a 
number of facts: Ms. Smith is “willing to work with all people regardless 
of classifcations such as race, creed, sexual orientation, and gender” and 
“will gladly create custom graphics and websites” for clients of any sex-
ual orientation; she will not produce content that “contradicts biblical 
truth” regardless of who orders it; Ms. Smith's belief that marriage is a 
union between one man and one woman is a sincerely held conviction; 
Ms. Smith provides design services that are “expressive” and her “origi-
nal, customized” creations “contribut[e] to the overall message” her 
business conveys “through the websites” it creates; the wedding web-
sites she plans to create “will be expressive in nature,” will be “custo-
mized and tailored” through close collaboration with individual couples, 
and will “express Ms. Smith's and 303 Creative's message celebrating 
and promoting” her view of marriage; viewers of Ms. Smith's websites 
“will know that the websites are her original artwork;” and “[t]here are 
numerous companies in the State of Colorado and across the nation that 
offer custom website design services.” 
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Ultimately, the district court held that Ms. Smith was not entitled to 
the injunction she sought, and the Tenth Circuit affrmed. 
Held: The First Amendment prohibits Colorado from forcing a website 
designer to create expressive designs speaking messages with which 
the designer disagrees. Pp. 584–603. 
(a) The framers designed the Free Speech Clause of the First Amend-
ment to protect the “freedom to think as you will and to speak as you 
think.” Boy Scouts of America v. Dale, 530 U. S. 640, 660–661 (inter-
nal quotation marks omitted). The freedom to speak is among our in-
alienable rights. The freedom of thought and speech is “indispensable 
to the discovery and spread of political truth.” Whitney v. California, 
274 U. S. 357, 375 (Brandeis, J., concurring). For these reasons, “[i]f 
there is any fxed star in our constitutional constellation,” West Virginia 
Bd. of Ed. v. Barnette, 319 U. S. 624, 642, it is the principle that the 
government may not interfere with “an uninhibited marketplace of 
ideas,” McCullen v. Coakley, 573 U. S. 464, 476 (internal quotation 
marks omitted). 
This Court has previously faced cases where governments have 
sought to test these foundational principles. In Barnette, the Court 
held that the State of West Virginia's efforts to compel schoolchildren 
to salute the Nation's fag and recite the Pledge of Allegiance “invad[ed] 
the sphere of intellect and spirit which it is the purpose of the First 
Amendment . . . to reserve from all offcial control.” 319 U. S., at 642. 
State authorities had “transcend[ed] constitutional limitations on their 
powers.” Ibid. In Hurley v. Irish-American Gay, Lesbian and Bisex-
ual Group of Boston, Inc., 515 U. S. 557, the Court held that Massachu-
setts's public accommodations statute could not be used to force veter-
ans organizing a parade in Boston to include a group of gay, lesbian, 
and bisexual individuals because the parade was protected speech, and 
requiring the veterans to include voices they wished to exclude would 
impermissibly require them to “alter the expressive content of their 
parade.” Id., at 572–573. And in Boy Scouts of America v. Dale, 
when the Boy Scouts sought to exclude assistant scoutmaster James 
Dale from membership after learning he was gay, the Court held the 
Boy Scouts to be “an expressive association” entitled to First Amend-
ment protection. 530 U. S., at 656. The Court found that forcing the 
Scouts to include Mr. Dale would undoubtedly “interfere with [its] 
choice not to propound a point of view contrary to its beliefs.” Id., 
at 654. 
These cases illustrate that the First Amendment protects an individu-
al's right to speak his mind regardless of whether the government con-

572 303 CREATIVE LLC v. ELENIS 
Syllabus 
siders his speech sensible and well intentioned or deeply “misguided,” 
Hurley, 515 U. S., at 574, and likely to cause “anguish” or “incalculable 
grief,” Snyder v. Phelps, 562 U. S. 443, 456. Generally, too, the govern-
ment may not compel a person to speak its own preferred messages. 
See Tinker v. Des Moines Independent Community School Dist., 393 
U. S. 503, 505. Pp. 584–587. 
(b) Applying these principles to the parties' stipulated facts, the 
Court agrees with the Tenth Circuit that the wedding websites 
Ms. Smith seeks to create qualify as pure speech protected by the First 
Amendment under this Court's precedents. Ms. Smith's websites will 
express and communicate ideas—namely, those that “celebrate and pro-
mote the couple's wedding and unique love story” and those that “cele-
brat[e] and promot[e]” what Ms. Smith understands to be a marriage. 
Speech conveyed over the internet, like all other manner of speech, qual-
ifes for the First Amendment's protections. And the Court agrees 
with the Tenth Circuit that the wedding websites Ms. Smith seeks to 
create involve her speech, a conclusion supported by the parties' stipula-
tions, including that Ms. Smith intends to produce a fnal story for each 
couple using her own words and original artwork. While Ms. Smith's 
speech may combine with the couple's in a fnal product, an individual 
“does not forfeit constitutional protection simply by combining multifar-
ious voices” in a single communication. Hurley, 515 U. S., at 569. 
Ms. Smith seeks to engage in protected First Amendment speech; 
Colorado seeks to compel speech she does not wish to provide. As the 
Tenth Circuit observed, if Ms. Smith offers wedding websites celebrat-
ing marriages she endorses, the State intends to compel her to create 
custom websites celebrating other marriages she does not. 6 F. 4th 
1160, 1178. Colorado seeks to compel this speech in order to “excis[e] 
certain ideas or viewpoints from the public dialogue.” Turner Broad-
casting System, Inc. v. FCC, 512 U. S. 633, 642. Indeed, the Tenth Cir-
cuit recognized that the coercive “[e]liminati[on]” of dissenting ideas 
about marriage constitutes Colorado's “very purpose” in seeking to 
apply its law to Ms. Smith. 6 F. 4th, at 1178. But while the Tenth 
Circuit thought that Colorado could compel speech from Ms. Smith con-
sistent with the Constitution, this Court's First Amendment precedents 
teach otherwise. In Hurley, Dale, and Barnette, the Court found that 
governments impermissibly compelled speech in violation of the First 
Amendment when they tried to force speakers to accept a message with 
which they disagreed. Here, Colorado seeks to put Ms. Smith to a simi-
lar choice. If she wishes to speak, she must either speak as the State 
demands or face sanctions for expressing her own beliefs, sanctions that 
may include compulsory participation in “remedial . . . training,” fling 
periodic compliance reports, and paying monetary fnes. That is an im-
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permissible abridgment of the First Amendment's right to speak freely. 
Hurley, 515 U. S., at 574. 
Under Colorado's logic, the government may compel anyone who 
speaks for pay on a given topic to accept all commissions on that same 
topic—no matter the message—if the topic somehow implicates a cus-
tomer's statutorily protected trait. 6 F. 4th, at 1199 (Tymkovich, C. J., 
dissenting). Taken seriously, that principle would allow the govern-
ment to force all manner of artists, speechwriters, and others whose 
services involve speech to speak what they do not believe on pain of 
penalty. The Court's precedents recognize the First Amendment toler-
ates none of that. To be sure, public accommodations laws play a vital 
role in realizing the civil rights of all Americans, and governments in 
this country have a “compelling interest” in eliminating discrimination 
in places of public accommodation. Roberts v. United States Jaycees, 
468 U. S. 609, 628. This Court has recognized that public accommoda-
tions laws “vindicate the deprivation of personal dignity that surely ac-
companies denials of equal access to public establishments.” Heart of 
Atlanta Motel, Inc. v. United States, 379 U. S. 241, 250 (internal quota-
tion marks omitted). Over time, governments in this country have ex-
panded public accommodations laws in notable ways. Statutes like Col-
orado's grow from nondiscrimination rules the common law sometimes 
imposed on common carriers and places of traditional public accommoda-
tion like hotels and restaurants. Dale, 530 U. S., at 656–657. Often, 
these enterprises exercised something like monopoly power or hosted 
or transported others or their belongings. See, e. g., Liverpool & Great 
Western Steam Co. v. Phenix Ins. Co., 129 U. S. 397, 437. Importantly, 
States have also expanded their laws to prohibit more forms of discrimi-
nation. Today, for example, approximately half the States have laws 
like Colorado's that expressly prohibit discrimination on the basis of 
sexual orientation. The Court has recognized this is “unexceptional.” 
Masterpiece Cakeshop, Ltd. v. Colorado Civil Rights Comm'n, 584 U. S. 
–––, –––. States may “protect gay persons, just as [they] can protect 
other classes of individuals, in acquiring whatever products and services 
they choose on the same terms and conditions as are offered to other 
members of the public. And there are no doubt innumerable goods and 
services that no one could argue implicate the First Amendment.” 
Ibid. At the same time, this Court has also long recognized that no 
public accommodations law is immune from the demands of the Constitu-
tion. In particular, this Court has held, public accommodations statutes 
can sweep too broadly when deployed to compel speech. See, e. g., Hur-
ley, 515 U. S., at 571, 578; Dale, 530 U. S., at 659. As in those cases, 
when Colorado's public accommodations law and the Constitution collide, 
there can be no question which must prevail. U. S. Const. Art. VI, § 2.

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574 303 CREATIVE LLC v. ELENIS 
Syllabus 
As the Tenth Circuit saw it, Colorado has a compelling interest in 
ensuring “equal access to publicly available goods and services,” and no 
option short of coercing speech from Ms. Smith can satisfy that interest 
because she plans to offer “unique services” that are, “by defnition, 
unavailable elsewhere.” 6 F. 4th, at 1179–1180 (internal quotation 
marks omitted). In some sense, of course, her voice is unique; so is 
everyone's. But that hardly means a State may coopt an individual's 
voice for its own purposes. The speaker in Hurley had an “enviable” 
outlet for speech, and the Boy Scouts in Dale offered an arguably unique 
experience, but in both cases this Court held that the State could not 
use its public accommodations statute to deny a speaker the right “to 
choose the content of his own message.” Hurley, 515 U. S., at 573; see 
Dale, 530 U. S., at 650–656. A rule otherwise would conscript any 
unique voice to disseminate the government's preferred messages in vio-
lation of the First Amendment. Pp. 587–592. 
(c) Colorado now seems to acknowledge that the First Amendment 
does prohibit it from coercing Ms. Smith to create websites expressing 
any message with which she disagrees. Alternatively, Colorado con-
tends, Ms. Smith must simply provide the same commercial product to 
all, which she can do by repurposing websites celebrating marriages she 
does endorse for marriages she does not. Colorado's theory rests on a 
belief that this case does not implicate pure speech, but rather the sale 
of an ordinary commercial product, and that any burden on Ms. Smith's 
speech is purely “incidental.” On the State's telling, then, speech more 
or less vanishes from the picture—and, with it, any need for First 
Amendment scrutiny. Colorado's alternative theory, however, does not 
sit easily with its stipulation that Ms. Smith does not seek to sell an 
ordinary commercial good but intends to create “customized and tai-
lored” expressive speech for each couple “to celebrate and promote the 
couple's wedding and unique love story.” Colorado seeks to compel just 
the sort of speech that it tacitly concedes lies beyond its reach. 
The State stresses that Ms. Smith offers her speech for pay and does 
so through 303 Creative LLC, a company in which she is “the sole 
member-owner.” But many of the world's great works of literature and 
art were created with an expectation of compensation. And speakers 
do not shed their First Amendment protections by employing the corpo-
rate form to disseminate their speech. Colorado urges the Court to 
look at the reason Ms. Smith refuses to offer the speech it seeks to 
compel, and it claims that the reason is that she objects to the “protected 
characteristics” of certain customers. But the parties' stipulations 
state, to the contrary, that Ms. Smith will gladly conduct business with 
those having protected characteristics so long as the custom graphics

Cite as: 600 U. S. 570 (2023) 575 
Syllabus 
and websites she is asked to create do not violate her beliefs. 
Ms. Smith stresses that she does not create expressions that defy any 
of her beliefs for any customer, whether that involves encouraging vio-
lence, demeaning another person, or promoting views inconsistent with 
her religious commitments. 
The First Amendment's protections belong to all, not just to speakers 
whose motives the government fnds worthy. In this case, Colorado 
seeks to force an individual to speak in ways that align with its views 
but defy her conscience about a matter of major signifcance. In the 
past, other States in Barnette, Hurley, and Dale have similarly tested 
the First Amendment's boundaries by seeking to compel speech they 
thought vital at the time. But abiding the Constitution's commitment 
to the freedom of speech means all will encounter ideas that are “mis-
guided, or even hurtful.” Hurley, 515 U. S., at 574. Consistent with 
the First Amendment, the Nation's answer is tolerance, not coercion. 
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. Colorado cannot deny that promise consist-
ent with the First Amendment. Pp. 593–596, 602–603. 
6 F. 4th 1160, reversed. 
Gorsuch, J., delivered the opinion of the Court, in which Roberts, 
C. J., and Thomas, Alito, Kavanaugh, and Barrett, JJ., joined. Soto-
mayor, J., fled a dissenting opinion, in which Kagan and Jackson, JJ., 
joined, post, p. 603. 
Kristen K. Waggoner argued the cause for petitioners. 
With her on the briefs were John J. Bursch, Erin M. Hawley, 
David A. Cortman, Jonathan A. Scruggs, Katherine L. An-
derson, and Jacob P . Warner. 
Eric R. Olson, Solicitor General of Colorado, argued the 
cause for respondents. With him on the brief were Philip 
J. Weiser, Attorney General of Colorado, Isabel Broer, Abi-
gail M. Hinchcliff, Bianca E. Miyata, Vincent E. Morscher , 
Helen Norton, and Danny Rheiner. 
Deputy Solicitor General Fletcher argued the cause for 
the United States as amicus curiae urging affrmance. 
With him on the brief were Solicitor General Prelogar , As-
sistant Attorney General Clarke , Principal Deputy Assist-
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576 303 CREATIVE LLC v. ELENIS 
Counsel 
ant Attorney General Boynton, Colleen E. Roh Sinzdak, 
Elizabeth Parr Hecker, Teresa Kwong , and Michael S. 
Raab.* 
*Briefs of amici curiae urging reversal were fled for the State of Ari-
zona et al. by Mark Brnovich, Attorney General of Arizona, Brunn W. 
Roysden III, Solicitor General, Michael Catlett, Deputy Solicitor General, 
and Kate B. Sawyer , Assistant Solicitor General, by Douglas J. Peterson, 
Attorney General of Nebraska, David T. Bydalek, Deputy Attorney Gen-
eral, and James A. Campbell, Solicitor General, and by the Attorneys Gen-
eral for their respective States as follows: Steve Marshall of Alabama, 
Treg R. Taylor of Alaska, Leslie Rutledge of Arkansas, Christopher M. 
Carr of Georgia, Lawrence G. Wasden of Idaho, Theodore E. Rokita of 
Indiana, Derek Schmidt of Kansas, Daniel Cameron of Kentucky, Jeff 
Landry of Louisiana, Lynn Fitch of Mississippi, Eric S. Schmitt of Mis-
souri, Austin Knudsen of Montana, Dave Yost of Ohio, John M. O'Connor 
of Oklahoma, Alan Wilson of South Carolina, Herbert H. Slatery III of 
Tennessee, Sean D. Reyes of Utah, and Patrick Morrisey of West Virginia; 
for the Alabama Center for Law and Liberty by Matthew J. Clark; for the 
Association of Certifed Biblical Counselors Inc. by Michael S. Overing 
and Edward C. Wilde; for the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty by Eric 
C. Rassbach and William J. Haun; for the C12 Group et al. by Timothy J. 
Newton; for the Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights by Jona-
than P . Lienhard and Andrew D. Watkins; for the Center for Religious 
Expression by Nathan W. Kellum; for the Christian Family Coalition Flor-
ida, Inc., by Dennis Grossman; for the Christian Legal Society et al. by 
Walter M. Weber and Kimberlee Wood Colby; for the Church of Jesus 
Christ of Latter-day Saints et al. by Alexander Dushku and R. Shawn 
Gunnarson; for Claremont Institute's Center for Constitutional Jurispru-
dence by John C. Eastman and Anthony T. Caso; for Colorado Legislators 
by William Wagner; for Concerned Women for America by Steven W. Fit-
schen; for the Council for Christian Colleges and Universities et al. by 
Gene C. Schaerr, Erik S. Jaffe , H. Christopher Bartolomucci, Hannah C. 
Smith, and Kathryn E. Tarbert; for the Ethics and Public Policy Center 
et al. by Thomas Brejcha, Jeffrey M. Trissell, Charles S. LiMandri, and 
Paul M. Jonna; for First Amendment Scholars by Kenneth C. Daines; for 
the Freedom and Justice Foundation by David C. McGrail; for the Insti-
tute for Faith and Family by Deborah J. Dewart and Tami Fitzgerald; for 
the Jewish Coalition for Religious Liberty by Josh Blackman and Howard 
Slugh; for Liberty Counsel by Horatio G. Mihet, Roger K. Gannam, Ma-
thew D. Staver, and Anita L . Staver; for the Life Legal Defense Founda-
tion et al. by Nikolas T. Nikas and Catherine W. Short; for the Mountain

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Justice Gorsuch delivered the opinion of the Court. 
Like many States, Colorado has a law forbidding busi-
nesses from engaging in discrimination when they sell goods 
States Legal Foundation et al. by William E. Trachman, Braden Boucek, 
and Kimberly Hermann; for Multimedia Production Professionals by John 
C. Sullivan; for the National Association of Evangelicals et al. by Freder-
ick W. Claybrook, Jr., Mr. Fitschen, and James A. Davids; for Scholars of 
Family and Sexuality by Dean R. Broyles; for the Thomas More Law 
Center by Erin Elizabeth Mersino and Richard Thompson; for Tyndale 
House Publishers et al. by Christopher E. Mills; for the United States 
Conference of Catholic Bishops et al. by Eric N. Kniffn; for United States 
Senators et al. by J. Michael Connolly; for Walk for Life West Coast by 
Samuel D. Green and Renee K. Carlson; for Young America's Foundation 
by David H. Thompson and John D. Ohlendorf ; for Dale Carpenter et al. 
by Eugene Volokh, Mr. Carpenter , Ilya Shapiro , all pro se , Theodore H. 
Frank, and Anna St. John; for Robert P. George by Edward M. Wenger; 
for Christopher R. Green by Mr. Green, pro se, Randall Wenger and Jer-
emy Samek; for Mark Janus et al. by Jeffrey M. Schwab and M. E. Buck 
Dougherty III; for Aaron Klein et al. by Kelly J. Shackelford, Jeffrey C. 
Mateer, David J. Hacker, Stephanie N. Taub, and Herbert G . Grey; for 
Adam J. MacLeod by Jeffrey A. Shafer; and for 15 Family Policy Organiza-
tions by David French. 
Briefs of amici curiae urging affrmance were fled for the State of 
Massachusetts et al. by Maura Healey, Attorney General of Massachu-
setts, Elizabeth N . Dewar, State Solicitor, and Abigail B. Taylor and 
Adam M. Cambier , Assistant Attorneys General, and by the Attorneys 
General of their respective jurisdictions as follows: Rob Bonta of Califor-
nia, William Tong of Connecticut, Kathleen Jennings of Delaware, Karl 
A. Racine of the District of Columbia, Holly T. Shikada of Hawaii, Kwame 
Raoul of Illinois, Aaron M. Frey of Maine, Brian E . Frosh of Maryland, 
Dana Nessel of Michigan, Keith Ellison of Minnesota, Aaron D. Ford of 
Nevada, Matthew J. Platkin of New Jersey, Hector Balderas of New Mex-
ico, Letitia James of New York, Joshua H. Stein of North Carolina, Ellen 
F. Rosenblum of Oregon, Josh Shapiro of Pennsylvania, Peter F. Neronha 
of Rhode Island, Susanne R. Young of Vermont, Robert W. Ferguson of 
Washington, and Joshua L. Kaul of Wisconsin; for the Adventist Forum 
et al. by Juan O. Perla and Hermann Ferré; for the American Bar Associ-
ation by Donald B. Verrilli, Jr., Ginger D. Anders, and Deborah Enix-
Ross; for the American Civil Liberties Union et al. by David D. Cole , 
Mark Silverstein, Jennesa Calvo-Friedman, James D. Esseks, Brian 
Hauss, Louise Melling , Rose Saxe, and Ria Tabacco Mar; for the Ameri-

578 303 CREATIVE LLC v. ELENIS 
Opinion of the Court 
and services to the public. Laws along these lines have 
done much to secure the civil rights of all Americans. But 
in this particular case Colorado does not just seek to ensure 
the sale of goods or services on equal terms. It seeks to use 
can Psychological Association et al. by Tassity S. Johnson, Urja Mittal, 
Deanne M. Ottaviano , and Nathalie Gilfoyle; for First Amendment Schol-
ars by Elizabeth B . Wydra, Brianne J. Gorod, and David H . Gans; for 
First Amendment Scholars by Michael R. Dreeben, Meaghan VerGow, and 
Melissa C. Cassel; for Former U. S. Rep. Anthony Coelho et al. by Sanford 
Jay Rosen and Michael S. Nunez; for the Freedom From Religion Founda-
tion et al. by Patrick Elliott; for GLBTQ Legal Advocates & Defenders 
et al. by Mary L . Bonauto, Gary D . Buseck, Chris Erchull, Jennifer C. 
Pizer, Shannon Minter , and Christopher F. Stoll; for the Lawyers' Com-
mittee for Civil Rights Under Law et al. by Ethan H. Townsend, Sarah 
P . Hogarth, Damon Hewitt, Jon Greenbaum, Dariely Rodriguez, and Ben-
jamin F. Aiken; for Local Governments et al. by Sara J. Eisenberg, Julie 
Wilensky, Anne L. Morgan, Christopher D. Balch, Beth Cate , David 
Hughes, G. Nicholas Herman, Myriam Zreczny Kasper , Christopher J. 
Caso, Kristin M. Bronson, Robert E. Hornik, Jr., Barry N. Handwerger , 
Michael N. Feuer , Sylvia O. Hinds-Radix, Leslie J. Girard, Lyndsey M. 
Olson, Mark Barber , and James R. Williams; for the Modern Military 
Association of America et al. by Michael E. Bern and Peter Perkowski; 
for the NAACP Legal Defense & Educational Fund, Inc., by Janai S. 
Nelson, Samuel Spital, Georgina Yeomans, and Antonio L. Ingram II; 
for the National League of Cities et al. by Aileen M. McGrath and Pratik 
A. Shah; for the National Women's Law Center et al. by Megan L. Rodg-
ers, Fatima Goss Graves, Emily J. Martin, and Sunu P . Chandy; for Pub-
lic Accommodations Law Scholars by Joshua Matz, Raymond P . Tolen-
tino, and Carmen Iguina González; for Public Citizen by Scott L. Nelson, 
Allison M. Zieve , and Nandan M. Joshi; for the Tanenbaum Center for 
Interreligious Understanding by Robert J. Ward; for the Western Jurisdic-
tion of the United Methodist Church et al. by Roy T. Englert, Jr., Jeffrey 
S. Trachtman, Tobias B. Jacoby, and Jason M. Moff ; for Ilan H. Meyer, 
Ph.D., et al. by Stephen B . Kinnaird; for Tobias B. Wolff by Mr. Wolff, 
pro se and Eric Alan Stone; for 27+ Lay Roman Catholics by James K. 
Riley, pro se; for 30 Religious, Civil Rights, and Grassroots Organizations 
by Jessica Ellsworth; and for 137 Members of Congress by Peter T . 
Barbur. 
Briefs of amici curiae were fled for Americans for Prosperity Founda-
tion by Cynthia Fleming Crawford; for CatholicVote.org Education Fund 
by Scott W. Gaylord; for Creative Professionals et al. by Miles E. Cole-
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its law to compel an individual to create speech she does not 
believe. The question we face is whether that course vio-
lates the Free Speech Clause of the First Amendment. 
I 
A 
Through her business, 303 Creative LLC, Lorie Smith of-
fers website and graphic design, marketing advice, and social 
media management services. Recently, she decided to ex-
pand her offerings to include services for couples seeking 
websites for their weddings. As she envisions it, her web-
sites will provide couples with text, graphic arts, and videos 
to “celebrate” and “conve[y]” the “details” of their “unique 
love story.” App. to Pet. for Cert. 182a, 187a, 198a. The 
websites will discuss how the couple met, explain their back-
grounds, families, and future plans, and provide information 
about their upcoming wedding. All of the text and graphics 
on these websites will be “original,” “customized,” and “tai-
lored” creations. Id., at 187a. The websites will be “ex-
pressive in nature,” designed “to communicate a particular 
message.” Id., at 181a. Viewers will know, too, “that the 
websites are [Ms. Smith's] original artwork,” for the name of 
the company she owns and operates by herself will be dis-
played on every one. Id., at 187a. 
man; for Family Research Council by Jonathan R. Whitehead, Michael 
K. Whitehead, and Travis Weber; for Law and Economics Scholars by Sean 
P . Gates and Andrew C. Nichols; for the Lonang Institute by Kerry Lee 
Morgan and Randall A. Pentiuk; for the New York State Bar Association 
by Sherry Levin Wallach, Christopher R. Riano, Jacqueline J. Drohan, 
and Robert S. Rosborough IV; for Public Advocate of the United States et 
al. by William J. Olson, Jeremiah L. Morgan, Phillip L. Jauregui, Gary 
G. Kreep, Joseph W. Miller, J. Mark Brewer , and Patrick McSweeney; for 
Scholars of Behavioral Science et al. by Josephine K. Petrick, Adam W. 
Hofmann, and David C. Casarrubias; for Website and Graphic Designers 
by William L. Esser IV and Nicholas H. Lee; for David Boyle by Mr. 
Boyle, pro se; and for Kent Greenfeld by Daniel A. Rubens. 
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580 303 CREATIVE LLC v. ELENIS 
Opinion of the Court 
While Ms. Smith has laid the groundwork for her new ven-
ture, she has yet to carry out her plans. She worries that, 
if she does so, Colorado will force her to express views with 
which she disagrees. Ms. Smith provides her website and 
graphic services to customers regardless of their race, creed, 
sex, or sexual orientation. Id., at 184a. But she has never 
created expressions that contradict her own views for any-
one—whether that means generating works that encourage 
violence, demean another person, or defy her religious be-
liefs by, say, promoting atheism. See ibid.; see also Tr. of 
Oral Arg. 19–20. Ms. Smith does not wish to do otherwise 
now, but she worries Colorado has different plans. Specif-
cally, she worries that, if she enters the wedding website 
business, the State will force her to convey messages incon-
sistent with her belief that marriage should be reserved to 
unions between one man and one woman. App. to Pet. for 
Cert. 177a–190a. Ms. Smith acknowledges that her views 
about marriage may not be popular in all quarters. But, she 
asserts, the First Amendment's Free Speech Clause protects 
her from being compelled to speak what she does not believe. 
The Constitution, she insists, protects her right to differ. 
B 
To clarify her rights, Ms. Smith fled a lawsuit in federal 
district court. In that suit, she sought an injunction to pre-
vent the State from forcing her to create wedding websites 
celebrating marriages that defy her beliefs. App. 303–305. 
To secure relief, Ms. Smith frst had to establish her standing 
to sue. That required her to show “a credible threat” ex-
isted that Colorado would, in fact, seek to compel speech 
from her that she did not wish to produce. Susan B. An-
thony List v. Driehaus, 573 U. S. 149, 159 (2014). 
Toward that end, Ms. Smith began by directing the court 
to the Colorado Anti-Discrimination Act (CADA). That law 
defnes a “public accommodation” broadly to include almost

Cite as: 600 U. S. 570 (2023) 581 
Opinion of the Court 
every public-facing business in the State. Colo. Rev. Stat. 
§ 24–34–601(1) (2022). In what some call its “Accommoda-
tion Clause,” the law prohibits a public accommodation from 
denying “the full and equal enjoyment” of its goods and serv-
ices to any customer based on his race, creed, disability, sex-
ual orientation, or other statutorily enumerated trait. § 24– 
34–601(2)(a). Either state offcials or private citizens may 
bring actions to enforce the law. §§ 24–34–306, 24–34– 
602(1). And a variety of penalties can follow. Courts can 
order fines up to $500 per violation. § 24–34–602(1)(a). 
The Colorado Commission on Civil Rights can issue cease-
and-desist orders, § 24–34–306(9), and require violators to 
take various other “affirmative action[s],” §§ 24–34–605, 
24–34–306(9). In the past, these have included participation 
in mandatory educational programs and the submission of 
ongoing compliance reports to state offcials. See Master-
piece Cakeshop, Ltd. v. Colorado Civil Rights Comm'n, 584 
U. S. –––, ––– (2018).
1 
In her lawsuit, Ms. Smith alleged that, if she enters the 
wedding website business to celebrate marriages she does 
endorse, she faces a credible threat that Colorado will seek 
to use CADA to compel her to create websites celebrat-
ing marriages she does not endorse. 6 F. 4th 1160, 1173– 
1174 (CA10 2021). As evidence, Ms. Smith pointed to Colo-
1 In addition to the Accommodation Clause, CADA contains a “Com-
munication Clause” that prohibits a public accommodation from “publish-
[ing] . . . any written . . . communication” indicating that a person will be 
denied “the full and equal enjoyment” of services or that he will be 
“unwelcome, objectionable, unacceptable, or undesirable” based on a pro-
tected classifcation. Colo. Rev. Stat. § 24–34–601(2)(a) (2022). The Com-
munication Clause, Ms. Smith notes, prohibits any speech inconsistent 
with the Accommodation Clause. Because Colorado concedes that its 
authority to apply the Communication Clause to Ms. Smith stands or falls 
with its authority to apply the Accommodation Clause, see Brief for 
Respondents 44–45, we focus our attention on the Accommodation 
Clause. 
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rado's record of past enforcement actions under CADA, 
including one that worked its way to this Court fve years 
ago. See Masterpiece Cakeshop, 584 U. S., at –––; see also 
App. 25–155 (discussing Colorado's other past enforcement 
actions). 
To facilitate the district court's resolution of the merits of 
her case, Ms. Smith and the State stipulated to a number 
of facts: 
• Ms. Smith is “willing to work with all people regard-
less of classifcations such as race, creed, sexual orien-
tation, and gender,” and she “will gladly create custom 
graphics and websites” for clients of any sexual orien-
tation. App. to Pet. for Cert. 184a. 
• She will not produce content that “contradicts biblical 
truth” regardless of who orders it. Ibid. 
• Her belief that marriage is a union between one man 
and one woman is a sincerely held religious conviction. 
Id., at 179a. 
• All of the graphic and website design services 
Ms. Smith provides are “expressive.” Id., at 181a. 
• The websites and graphics Ms. Smith designs are 
“original, customized” creations that “contribut[e] to 
the overall messages” her business conveys “through 
the websites” it creates. Id., at 181a–182a. 
• Just like the other services she provides, the wedding 
websites Ms. Smith plans to create “will be expressive 
in nature.” Id., at 187a. 
• Those wedding websites will be “customized and tai-
lored” through close collaboration with individual cou-
ples, and they will “express Ms. Smith's and 303 Cre-
ative's message celebrating and promoting” her view 
of marriage. Id., at 186a–187a. 
• Viewers of Ms. Smith's websites “will know that the 
websites are [Ms. Smith's and 303 Creative's] original 
artwork.” Id., at 187a. 
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• To the extent Ms. Smith may not be able to provide 
certain services to a potential customer, “[t]here are 
numerous companies in the State of Colorado and 
across the nation that offer custom website design 
services.” Id., at 190a. 
C 
Ultimately, the district court ruled against Ms. Smith. 
405 F. Supp. 3d 907, 912 (Colo. 2019). So did the Tenth Cir-
cuit. 6 F. 4th, at 1168. For its part, the Tenth Circuit held 
that Ms. Smith had standing to sue. In that court's judg-
ment, she had established a credible threat that, if she fol-
lows through on her plans to offer wedding website services, 
Colorado will invoke CADA to force her to create speech 
she does not believe or endorse. Id., at 1172–1175. The 
court pointed to the fact that “Colorado has a history of past 
enforcement against nearly identical conduct—i. e., Master-
piece Cakeshop”; that anyone in the State may fle a com-
plaint against Ms. Smith and initiate “a potentially burden-
some administrative hearing” process; and that “Colorado 
[has] decline[d] to disavow future enforcement” proceedings 
against her. Id., at 1174. Before us, no party challenges 
these conclusions. 
Turning to the merits, however, the Tenth Circuit held 
that Ms. Smith was not entitled to the injunction she sought. 
The court acknowledged that Ms. Smith's planned wedding 
websites qualify as “pure speech” protected by the First 
Amendment. Id., at 1176. As a result, the court reasoned, 
Colorado had to satisfy “strict scrutiny” before compelling 
speech from her that she did not wish to create. Id., at 1178. 
Under that standard, the court continued, the State had to 
show both that forcing Ms. Smith to create speech would 
serve a compelling governmental interest and that no less 
restrictive alternative exists to secure that interest. Ibid. 
Ultimately, a divided panel concluded that the State had car-
ried these burdens. As the majority saw it, Colorado has 
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a compelling interest in ensuring “equal access to publicly 
available goods and services,” and no option short of coercing 
speech from Ms. Smith can satisfy that interest because she 
plans to offer “unique services” that are, “by defnition, un-
available elsewhere.” Id., at 1179–1180 (internal quotation 
marks omitted). 
Chief Judge Tymkovich dissented. He observed that “en-
suring access to a particular person's” voice, expression, or 
artistic talent has never qualifed as “a compelling state in-
terest” under this Court's precedents. Id., at 1203. Nor, 
he submitted, should courts depart from those precedents 
now. “Taken to its logical end,” Chief Judge Tymkovich 
warned, his colleagues' approach would permit the govern-
ment to “regulate the messages communicated by all art-
ists”—a result he called “unprecedented.” Id., at 1204. 
We granted certiorari to review the Tenth Circuit's dispo-
sition. 595 U. S. ––– (2022). 
II 
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.” Boy Scouts of America v. Dale, 530 
U. S. 640, 660–661 (2000) (internal quotation marks omitted). 
They did so because they saw the freedom of speech “both 
as an end and as a means.” Whitney v. California, 274 U. S. 
357, 375 (1927) (Brandeis, J., concurring); see also 12 The Pa-
pers of James Madison 193–194 (C. Hobson & R. Rutland eds. 
1979). An end because the freedom to think and speak is 
among our inalienable human rights. See, e. g., 4 Annals of 
Cong. 934 (1794) (Rep. Madison). A means because the free-
dom of thought and speech is “indispensable to the discovery 
and spread of political truth.” Whitney, 274 U. S., at 375 
(Brandeis, J., concurring). By allowing all views to fourish, 
the framers understood, we may test and improve our own 
thinking both as individuals and as a Nation. For all these 
reasons, “[i]f there is any fxed star in our constitutional con-
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stellation,” West Virginia Bd. of Ed. v. Barnette, 319 U. S. 
624, 642 (1943), it is the principle that the government may 
not interfere with “an uninhibited marketplace of ideas,” Mc-
Cullen v. Coakley, 573 U. S. 464, 476 (2014) (internal quota-
tion marks omitted). 
From time to time, governments in this country have 
sought to test these foundational principles. In Barnette, 
for example, the Court faced an effort by the State of West 
Virginia to force schoolchildren to salute the Nation's fag 
and recite the Pledge of Allegiance. If the students refused, 
the State threatened to expel them and fne or jail their par-
ents. Some families objected on the ground that the State 
sought to compel their children to express views at odds with 
their faith as Jehovah's Witnesses. When the dispute ar-
rived here, this Court offered a frm response. In seeking 
to compel students to salute the fag and recite a pledge, the 
Court held, state authorities had “transcend[ed] consti-
tutional limitations on their powers.” 319 U. S., at 642. 
Their dictates “invade[d] the sphere of intellect and spirit 
which it is the purpose of the First Amendment . . . to re-
serve from all offcial control.” Ibid. 
A similar story unfolded in Hurley v. Irish-American Gay, 
Lesbian and Bisexual Group of Boston, Inc., 515 U. S. 557 
(1995). There, veterans organizing a St. Patrick's Day pa-
rade in Boston refused to include a group of gay, lesbian, and 
bisexual individuals in their event. The group argued that 
Massachusetts's public accommodations statute entitled it to 
participate in the parade as a matter of law. Id., at 560–561. 
Lower courts agreed. Id., at 561–566. But this Court re-
versed. Id., at 581. Whatever state law may demand, this 
Court explained, the parade was constitutionally protected 
speech and requiring the veterans to include voices they 
wished to exclude would impermissibly require them to 
“alter the expressive content of their parade.” Id., at 572– 
573. The veterans' choice of what to say (and not say) might 
have been unpopular, but they had a First Amendment right 
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to present their message undiluted by views they did not 
share. 
Then there is Boy Scouts of America v. Dale. In that 
case, the Boy Scouts excluded James Dale, an assistant 
scoutmaster, from membership after learning he was gay. 
Mr. Dale argued that New Jersey's public accommodations 
law required the Scouts to reinstate him. 530 U. S., at 644– 
645. The New Jersey Supreme Court sided with Mr. Dale, 
id., at 646–647, but again this Court reversed, id., at 661. 
The decision to exclude Mr. Dale may not have implicated 
pure speech, but this Court held that the Boy Scouts “is an 
expressive association” entitled to First Amendment protec-
tion. Id., at 656. And, the Court found, forcing the Scouts 
to include Mr. Dale would “interfere with [its] choice not to 
propound a point of view contrary to its beliefs.” Id., at 654. 
As these cases illustrate, the First Amendment protects 
an individual's right to speak his mind regardless of whether 
the government considers his speech sensible and well inten-
tioned or deeply “misguided,” Hurley, 515 U. S., at 574, and 
likely to cause “anguish” or “incalculable grief,” Snyder v. 
Phelps, 562 U. S. 443, 456 (2011). Equally, the First Amend-
ment protects acts of expressive association. See, e. g., 
Dale, 530 U. S., at 647–656; Hurley, 515 U. S., at 568–570, 579. 
Generally, too, the government may not compel a person to 
speak its own preferred messages. See Tinker v. Des 
Moines Independent Community School Dist., 393 U. S. 503, 
505–506 (1969); see also, e. g., Miami Herald Publishing Co. 
v. Tornillo, 418 U. S. 241, 256 (1974); Wooley v. Maynard, 430 
U. S. 705, 714 (1977); National Institute of Family and Life 
Advocates v. Becerra, 585 U. S. –––, ––– (2018) (NIFLA). 
Nor does it matter whether the government seeks to compel 
a person to speak its message when he would prefer to re-
main silent or to force an individual to include other ideas 
with his own speech that he would prefer not to include. 
See Hurley, 515 U. S., at 568–570, 576; see also Rumsfeld v. 
Forum for Academic & Institutional Rights, Inc., 547 U. S.

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47, 63–64 (2006) (FAIR) (discussing cases). All that offends 
the First Amendment just the same. 
III 
Applying these principles to this case, we align ourselves 
with much of the Tenth Circuit's analysis. The Tenth Cir-
cuit held that the wedding websites Ms. Smith seeks to cre-
ate qualify as “pure speech” under this Court's precedents. 
6 F. 4th, at 1176. We agree. It is a conclusion that fows 
directly from the parties' stipulations. They have stipulated 
that Ms. Smith's websites promise to contain “images, words, 
symbols, and other modes of expression.” App. to Pet. 
for Cert. 181a. They have stipulated that every website will 
be her “original, customized” creation. Id., at 181a–182a. 
And they have stipulated that Ms. Smith will create these 
websites to communicate ideas—namely, to “celebrate and 
promote the couple's wedding and unique love story” and to 
“celebrat[e] and promot[e]” what Ms. Smith understands to 
be a true marriage. Id., at 186a–187a. 
A hundred years ago, Ms. Smith might have furnished her 
services using pen and paper. Those services are no less 
protected speech today because they are conveyed with a 
“voice that resonates farther than it could from any soap-
box.” Reno v. American Civil Liberties Union, 521 U. S. 
844, 870 (1997). All manner of speech—from “pictures, 
flms, paintings, drawings, and engravings,” to “oral utter-
ance and the printed word”—qualify for the First Amend-
ment's protections; no less can hold true when it comes to 
speech like Ms. Smith's conveyed over the Internet. 
Kaplan v. California, 413 U. S. 115, 119–120 (1973); see also 
Shurtleff v. Boston, 596 U. S. –––, ––– – ––– (2022) (fags); 
Brown v. Entertainment Merchants Assn., 564 U. S. 786, 790 
(2011) (video games); Hurley, 515 U. S., at 568–570 (parades); 
Ward v. Rock Against Racism, 491 U. S. 781, 790 (1989) 
(music); Joseph Burstyn, Inc. v. Wilson, 343 U. S. 495, 501– 
502 (1952) (movies). 
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We further agree with the Tenth Circuit that the wedding 
websites Ms. Smith seeks to create involve her speech. 6 
F. 4th, at 1181, and n. 5. Again, the parties' stipulations lead 
the way to that conclusion. See App. to Pet. for Cert. 181a, 
187a. As the parties have described it, Ms. Smith intends 
to “ve[t]” each prospective project to determine whether it 
is one she is willing to endorse. Id., at 185a. She will con-
sult with clients to discuss “their unique stories as source 
material.” Id., at 186a. And she will produce a fnal story 
for each couple using her own words and her own “original 
artwork.” Id., at 182a–183a. Of course, Ms. Smith's speech 
may combine with the couple's in the fnal product. But for 
purposes of the First Amendment that changes nothing. An 
individual “does not forfeit constitutional protection simply 
by combining multifarious voices” in a single communication. 
Hurley, 515 U. S., at 569. 
As surely as Ms. Smith seeks to engage in protected First 
Amendment speech, Colorado seeks to compel speech 
Ms. Smith does not wish to provide. As the Tenth Circuit 
observed, if Ms. Smith offers wedding websites celebrating 
marriages she endorses, the State intends to “forc[e her] to 
create custom websites” celebrating other marriages she 
does not. 6 F. 4th, at 1178. Colorado seeks to compel this 
speech in order to “excis[e] certain ideas or viewpoints from 
the public dialogue.” Turner Broadcasting System, Inc. v. 
FCC, 512 U. S. 633, 642 (1994). Indeed, the Tenth Circuit 
recognized that the coercive “[e]liminati[on]” of dissenting 
“ideas” about marriage constitutes Colorado's “very pur-
pose” in seeking to apply its law to Ms. Smith. 6 F. 4th, 
at 1178. 
We part ways with the Tenth Circuit only when it comes to 
the legal conclusions that follow. While that court thought 
Colorado could compel speech from Ms. Smith consistent 
with the Constitution, our First Amendment precedents laid 
out above teach otherwise. In Hurley, the Court found that 
Massachusetts impermissibly compelled speech in violation 
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Opinion of the Court 
of the First Amendment when it sought to force parade orga-
nizers to accept participants who would “affec[t] the[ir] mes-
sage.” 515 U. S., at 572. In Dale, the Court held that New 
Jersey intruded on the Boy Scouts' First Amendment rights 
when it tried to require the group to “propound a point of 
view contrary to its beliefs” by directing its membership 
choices. 530 U. S., at 654. And in Barnette, this Court 
found impermissible coercion when West Virginia required 
schoolchildren to recite a pledge that contravened their con-
victions on threat of punishment or expulsion. 319 U. S., at 
626–629. Here, Colorado seeks to put Ms. Smith to a similar 
choice: If she wishes to speak, she must either speak as the 
State demands or face sanctions for expressing her own be-
liefs, sanctions that may include compulsory participation in 
“remedial . . . training,” fling periodic compliance reports as 
offcials deem necessary, and paying monetary fnes. App. 
120; supra, at 580–582. Under our precedents, that “is 
enough,” more than enough, to represent an impermissible 
abridgment of the First Amendment's right to speak freely. 
Hurley, 515 U. S., at 574. 
Consider what a contrary approach would mean. Under 
Colorado's logic, the government may compel anyone who 
speaks for pay on a given topic to accept all commissions on 
that same topic—no matter the underlying message—if the 
topic somehow implicates a customer's statutorily protected 
trait. 6 F. 4th, at 1198 (Tymkovich, C. J., dissenting). 
Taken seriously, that principle would allow the government 
to force all manner of artists, speechwriters, and others 
whose services involve speech to speak what they do not 
believe on pain of penalty. The government could require 
“an unwilling Muslim movie director to make a flm with a 
Zionist message,” or “an atheist muralist to accept a commis-
sion celebrating Evangelical zeal,” so long as they would 
make flms or murals for other members of the public with 
different messages. Id., at 1199. Equally, the government 
could force a male website designer married to another man 
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to design websites for an organization that advocates against 
same-sex marriage. See Brief for Petitioners 26–27. 
Countless other creative professionals, too, could be forced 
to choose between remaining silent, producing speech that 
violates their beliefs, or speaking their minds and incurring 
sanctions for doing so. See, e. g., Brief for Creative Profes-
sionals et al. as Amici Curiae 5–10; Brief for First Amend-
ment Scholars as Amici Curiae 19–22. As our precedents 
recognize, the First Amendment tolerates none of that. 
In saying this much, we do not question the vital role pub-
lic accommodations laws play in realizing the civil rights of 
all Americans. This Court has recognized that govern-
ments in this country have a “compelling interest” in elimi-
nating discrimination in places of public accommodation. 
Roberts v. United States Jaycees , 468 U. S. 609, 628 
(1984); see also Hurley, 515 U. S., at 571–572. This Court 
has recognized, too, that public accommodations laws “vindi-
cate the deprivation of personal dignity that surely accompa-
nies denials of equal access to public establishments.” 
Heart of Atlanta Motel, Inc. v. United States, 379 U. S. 
241, 250 (1964) (internal quotation marks omitted); see also, 
e. g., Katzenbach v. McClung, 379 U. S. 294 (1964); Newman 
v. Piggie Park Enterprises, Inc., 390 U. S. 400 (1968) (per 
curiam). 
Over time, governments in this country have expanded 
public accommodations laws in notable ways too. Statutes 
like Colorado's grow from nondiscrimination rules the com-
mon law sometimes imposed on common carriers and places 
of traditional public accommodation like hotels and restau-
rants. Dale, 530 U. S., at 656–657. Often, these enter-
prises exercised something like monopoly power or hosted 
or transported others or their belongings much like bailees. 
See, e. g., Liverpool & Great Western Steam Co. v. Phenix 
Ins. Co., 129 U. S. 397, 437 (1889); Primrose v. Western Union 
Telegraph Co., 154 U. S. 1, 14 (1894). Over time, some 
States, Colorado included, have expanded the reach of these 
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Opinion of the Court 
nondiscrimination rules to cover virtually every place of 
business engaged in any sales to the public. Compare 1885 
Colo. Sess. Laws pp. 132–133 (a short list of entities origi-
nally bound by the State's public accommodations law) with 
Colo. Rev. Stat. § 24–34–601(1) (currently defning a public 
accommodation to include “any place of business engaged in 
any sales to the public”). 
Importantly, States have also expanded their laws to pro-
hibit more forms of discrimination. Today, for example, ap-
proximately half the States have laws like Colorado's that 
expressly prohibit discrimination on the basis of sexual ori-
entation.
2 And, as we have recognized, this is entirely “un-
exceptional.” Masterpiece Cakeshop, 584 U. S., at –––. 
States may “protect gay persons, just as [they] can protect 
other classes of individuals, in acquiring whatever products 
and services they choose on the same terms and conditions 
as are offered to other members of the public. And there 
are no doubt innumerable goods and services that no one 
could argue implicate the First Amendment.” Ibid.; see 
also Hurley, 515 U. S., at 571–572; 6 F. 4th, at 1203 (Tymkov-
ich, C. J., dissenting). Consistent with all of this, Ms. Smith 
herself recognizes that Colorado and other States are gener-
ally free to apply their public accommodations laws, includ-
2 Besides Colorado, this includes Cal. Civ. Code Ann. § 51 (West 2020); 
Conn. Gen. Stat. § 46a–81d (2021); Del. Code Ann., Tit. 6, § 4504 (2019); 
Haw. Rev. Stat. § 489–3 (Cum. Supp. 2021); Ill. Comp. Stat., ch. 775, § 5/1– 
102 (West 2021); Iowa Code § 216.7 (2022); Me. Rev. Stat. Ann., Tit. 5, 
§ 4591 (2013); Md. State Govt. Code Ann. § 20–304 (2021); Mass. Gen. Laws, 
ch. 272, § 98 (2021); Mich. Comp. Laws Ann. § 37.2302 (West 2013); Minn. 
Stat. § 363A.11 (2022); Nev. Rev. Stat. § 651.070 (2017); N. H. Rev. Stat. 
Ann. § 354–A:17 (2022); N. J. Stat. Ann. § 10:5–12 (West 2013); N. M. Stat. 
Ann. § 28–1–7 (2022); N. Y . Exec. Law Ann. § 291(2) (West 2019); Ore. Rev. 
Stat. § 659A.403 (2021); R. I. Gen. Laws § 11–24–2 (2002); Vt. Stat. Ann., 
Tit. 9, § 4502(a) (2020); Va. Code Ann. § 2.2–3904 (2022); Wash. Rev. Code 
§ 49.60.215 (2022); Wis. Stat. § 106.52 (2019–2020). See also Brief for Local 
Governments et al. as Amici Curiae 5 (noting that many local govern-
ments have enacted similar rules). 
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ing their provisions protecting gay persons, to a vast array 
of businesses. Reply Brief 15; see Tr. of Oral Arg. 45–46. 
At the same time, this Court has also recognized that no 
public accommodations law is immune from the demands of 
the Constitution. In particular, this Court has held, public 
accommodations statutes can sweep too broadly when de-
ployed to compel speech. In Hurley, the Court commented 
favorably on Massachusetts's public accommodations law, but 
made plain it could not be “applied to expressive activity” to 
compel speech. 515 U. S., at 571, 578. In Dale, the Court 
observed that New Jersey's public accommodations law had 
many lawful applications but held that it could “not justify 
such a severe intrusion on the Boy Scouts' rights to freedom 
of expressive association.” 530 U. S., at 659. And, once 
more, what was true in those cases must hold true here. 
When a state public accommodations law and the Constitu-
tion collide, there can be no question which must prevail. 
U. S. Const., Art. VI, cl. 2. 
Nor is it any answer, as the Tenth Circuit seemed to sup-
pose, that Ms. Smith's services are “unique.” 6 F. 4th, at 
1180. In some sense, of course, her voice is unique; so is 
everyone's. But that hardly means a State may coopt an 
individual's voice for its own purposes. In Hurley, the vet-
erans had an “enviable” outlet for speech; after all, their pa-
rade was a notable and singular event. 515 U. S., at 560, 
577–578. In Dale, the Boy Scouts offered what some might 
consider a unique experience. 530 U. S., at 649–650. But 
in both cases this Court held that the State could not use its 
public accommodations statute to deny speakers the right 
“to choose the content of [their] own message[s].” Hurley, 
515 U. S., at 573; see Dale, 530 U. S., at 650–656. Were the 
rule otherwise, the better the artist, the fner the writer, the 
more unique his talent, the more easily his voice could be 
conscripted to disseminate the government's preferred mes-
sages. That would not respect the First Amendment; more 
nearly, it would spell its demise. 
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IV 
Before us, Colorado appears to distance itself from the 
Tenth Circuit's reasoning. Now, the State seems to ac-
knowledge that the First Amendment does forbid it from co-
ercing Ms. Smith to create websites endorsing same-sex mar-
riage or expressing any other message with which she 
disagrees. See Brief for Respondents 12 (disclaiming any 
interest in “interfer[ing] with [Ms. Smith's] choice to offer 
only websites of [her] own design”); see also Brief for United 
States as Amicus Curiae 19 (conceding that “constitutional 
concerns” would arise if Colorado “require[d] petitione[r] to 
design a website” that she “would not create or convey for 
any client”). Instead, Colorado devotes most of its efforts 
to advancing an alternative theory for affrmance. 
The State's alternative theory runs this way. To comply 
with Colorado law, the State says, all Ms. Smith must do is 
repurpose websites she will create to celebrate marriages 
she does endorse for marriages she does not. She sells a 
product to some, the State reasons, so she must sell the same 
product to all. Brief for Respondents 15, 20. At bottom, 
Colorado's theory rests on a belief that the Tenth Circuit 
erred at the outset when it said this case implicates pure 
speech. Id., at 19. Instead, Colorado says, this case in-
volves only the sale of an ordinary commercial product and 
any burden on Ms. Smith's speech is purely “incidental.” 
Id., at 18, 25–28; see Tr. of Oral Arg. 65, 97–98. On the 
State's telling, then, speech more or less vanishes from the 
picture—and, with it, any need for First Amendment scru-
tiny. In places, the dissent seems to advance the same line 
of argument. Post, at 630–631 (opinion of Sotomayor, J.). 
This alternative theory, however, is diffcult to square with 
the parties' stipulations. As we have seen, the State has 
stipulated that Ms. Smith does not seek to sell an ordinary 
commercial good but intends to create “customized and tai-
lored” speech for each couple. App. to Pet. for Cert. 181a, 
187a. The State has stipulated that “[e]ach website 303 Cre-
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Opinion of the Court 
ative designs and creates is an original, customized creation 
for each client.” Id., at 181a. The State has stipulated, too, 
that Ms. Smith's wedding websites “will be expressive in na-
ture, using text, graphics, and in some cases videos to cele-
brate and promote the couple's wedding and unique love 
story.” Id., at 187a. As the case comes to us, then, Colo-
rado seeks to compel just the sort of speech that it tacitly 
concedes lies beyond the reach of its powers. 
Of course, as the State emphasizes, Ms. Smith offers her 
speech for pay and does so through 303 Creative LLC, a com-
pany in which she is “the sole member-owner.” Id., at 181a; 
see also post, at 635 (opinion of Sotomayor, J.) (emphasizing 
Ms. Smith's “commercial” activity). But none of that makes 
a difference. Does anyone think a speechwriter loses his 
First Amendment right to choose for whom he works if he 
accepts money in return? Or that a visual artist who ac-
cepts commissions from the public does the same? Many of 
the world's great works of literature and art were created 
with an expectation of compensation. Nor, this Court has 
held, do speakers shed their First Amendment protections 
by employing the corporate form to disseminate their 
speech. This fact underlies our cases involving everything 
from movie producers to book publishers to newspapers. 
See, e. g., Joseph Burstyn, Inc., 343 U. S., at 497–503; 
Simon & Schuster, Inc. v. Members of N. Y . State Crime 
Victims Bd., 502 U. S. 105, 114–116 (1991); Grosjean v. Amer-
ican Press Co., 297 U. S. 233, 240–241, 249 (1936). 
Colorado next urges us to focus on the reason Ms. Smith 
refuses to offer the speech it seeks to compel. She refuses, 
the State insists, because she objects to the “protected char-
acteristics” of certain customers. Brief for Respondents 16; 
see also post, at 628–629, 633 (opinion of Sotomayor, J.) (re-
citing the same argument). But once more, the parties' stip-
ulations speak differently. The parties agree that Ms. Smith 
“will gladly create custom graphics and websites for gay, les-
bian, or bisexual clients or for organizations run by gay, 
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Opinion of the Court 
lesbian, or bisexual persons so long as the custom graphics 
and websites” do not violate her beliefs. App. to Pet. for 
Cert. 184a. That is a condition, the parties acknowledge, 
Ms. Smith applies to “all customers.” Ibid. Ms. Smith 
stresses, too, that she has not and will not create expressions 
that defy any of her beliefs for any customer, whether that 
involves encouraging violence, demeaning another person, or 
promoting views inconsistent with her religious commit-
ments. See Tr. of Oral Arg. 18–20. Nor, in any event, do 
the First Amendment's protections belong only to speakers 
whose motives the government fnds worthy; its protections 
belong to all, including to speakers whose motives others 
may fnd misinformed or offensive. See Federal Election 
Comm'n v. Wisconsin Right to Life, Inc., 551 U. S. 449, 468– 
469 (2007) (opinion of Roberts, C. J.) (observing that “a 
speaker's motivation is entirely irrelevant” (internal quota-
tion marks omitted)); National Socialist Party of America 
v. Skokie, 432 U. S. 43, 43–44 (1977) (per curiam ) (upholding 
free-speech rights of participants in a Nazi parade); Snyder, 
562 U. S., at 456–457 (same for protestors of a soldier's 
funeral).
3 
3 The dissent labels the distinction between status and message “amus-
ing” and “embarrassing.” Post, at 634. But in doing so, the dissent ig-
nores a fundamental feature of the Free Speech Clause. While it does 
not protect status-based discrimination unrelated to expression, generally 
it does protect a speaker's right to control her own message—even when 
we may disapprove of the speaker's motive or the message itself. The 
dissent's derision is no answer to any of this. It ignores, too, the fact that 
Colorado itself has, in other contexts, distinguished status-based discrimi-
nation (forbidden) from the right of a speaker to control his own message 
(protected). See App. 131, 137, 140, 143–144, 149, 152, 154. (Truth be 
told, even the dissent acknowledges “th[is] distinction” elsewhere in its 
opinion. Post, at 633, n. 11.) Nor is the distinction unusual in societies 
committed both to nondiscrimination rules and free expression. See, e. g., 
Lee v. Ashers Baking Co. Ltd., [2018] UKSC 49, p. 14 (“The less favourable 
treatment was afforded to the message not to the man”). Does the dis-
sent really fnd all that amusing and embarrassing? 
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Opinion of the Court 
Failing all else, Colorado suggests that this Court's deci-
sion in FAIR supports affrmance. See also post, at 626–628 
(opinion of Sotomayor, J.) (making the same argument). In 
FAIR, a group of schools challenged a law requiring them, 
as a condition of accepting federal funds, to permit military 
recruiters space on campus on equal terms with other poten-
tial employers. 547 U. S., at 51–52, 58. The only expres-
sive activity required of the law schools, the Court found, 
involved the posting of logistical notices along these lines: 
“ `The U. S. Army recruiter will meet interested students in 
Room 123 at 11 a.m.' ” Id., at 61–62. And, the Court rea-
soned, compelled speech of this sort was “incidental” and a 
“far cry” from the speech at issue in our “leading First 
Amendment precedents [that] have established the principle 
that freedom of speech prohibits the government from telling 
people what they must say.” Ibid.; see also NIFLA, 585 
U. S., at –––. 
It is a far cry from this case too. To be sure, our cases 
have held that the government may sometimes “requir[e] the 
dissemination of purely factual and uncontroversial informa-
tion,” particularly in the context of “commercial advertis-
ing.” Hurley, 515 U. S., at 573 (internal quotation marks 
omitted); see also NIFLA, 585 U. S., at –––; Riley v. Na-
tional Federation of Blind of N. C., Inc., 487 U. S. 781, 795– 
796 (1988). But this case involves nothing like that. Here, 
Colorado does not seek to impose an incidental burden on 
speech. It seeks to force an individual to “utter what is not 
in [her] mind” about a question of political and religious sig-
nifcance. Barnette, 319 U. S., at 634. And that, FAIR 
reaffrmed, is something the First Amendment does not tol-
erate. No government, FAIR recognized, may affect a 
“speaker's message” by “forc[ing]” her to “accommodate” 
other views, 547 U. S., at 63; no government may “ `alter' ” 
the “ `expressive content' ” of her message, id., at 63–64 (al-
teration omitted); and no government may “interfer[e] with” 
her “desired message,” id., at 64.

Cite as: 600 U. S. 570 (2023) 597 
Opinion of the Court 
V 
It is diffcult to read the dissent and conclude we are look-
ing at the same case. Much of it focuses on the evolution of 
public accommodations laws, post, at 609–615, and the strides 
gay Americans have made toward securing equal justice 
under law, post, at 615–619. And, no doubt, there is much 
to applaud here. But none of this answers the question we 
face today: Can a State force someone who provides her own 
expressive services to abandon her conscience and speak its 
preferred message instead? 
When the dissent fnally gets around to that question— 
more than halfway into its opinion—it reimagines the facts 
of this case from top to bottom. The dissent claims that 
Colorado wishes to regulate Ms. Smith's “conduct,” not her 
speech. Post, at 625–630. Forget Colorado's stipulation 
that Ms. Smith's activities are “expressive,” App. to Pet. for 
Cert. 181a, and the Tenth Circuit's conclusion that the State 
seeks to compel “pure speech,” 6 F. 4th, at 1176. The dis-
sent chides us for deciding a pre-enforcement challenge. 
Post, at 625. But it ignores the Tenth Circuit's fnding that 
Ms. Smith faces a credible threat of sanctions unless she con-
forms her views to the State's. 6 F. 4th, at 1172–1175. The 
dissent suggests (over and over again) that any burden on 
speech here is “incidental.” Post, at 625, 627–632, 634–635. 
All despite the Tenth Circuit's fnding that Colorado intends 
to force Ms. Smith to convey a message she does not believe 
with the “very purpose” of “[e]liminating . . . ideas” that dif-
fer from its own. 6 F. 4th, at 1178.
4 
Nor does the dissent's reimagination end there. It claims 
that, “for the frst time in its history,” the Court “grants a 
business open to the public” a “right to refuse to serve mem-
bers of a protected class.” Post, at 603; see also post, at 628, 
4 Perplexingly, too, the dissent suggests that, by recounting the Tenth 
Circuit's conclusion on this score, we “misunderstan[d] this case” and “in-
vo[ke] . . . Orwellian thought policing.” Post, at 635, n. 14. 
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n. 10, 635–636. Never mind that we do no such thing and 
Colorado itself has stipulated Ms. Smith will (as CADA re-
quires) “work with all people regardless of . . . sexual orien-
tation.” App. to Pet. for Cert. 184a. Never mind, too, that 
it is the dissent that would have this Court do something 
truly novel by allowing a government to coerce an individual 
to speak contrary to her beliefs on a signifcant issue of per-
sonal conviction, all in order to eliminate ideas that differ 
from its own. 
There is still more. The dissent asserts that we “sweep 
under the rug petitioners' challenge to CADA's Communica-
tion Clause.” Post, at 627. This despite the fact the parties 
and the Tenth Circuit recognized that Ms. Smith's Communi-
cation Clause challenge hinges on her Accommodation Clause 
challenge. (So much so that Colorado devoted less than two 
pages at the tail end of its brief to the Communication Clause 
and the Tenth Circuit afforded it just three paragraphs in 
its free-speech analysis. See Brief for Respondents 44–45; 
6 F. 4th, at 1182–1183.) 
5 The dissent even suggests that our 
decision today is akin to endorsing a “separate but equal” 
regime that would allow law frms to refuse women admis-
sion into partnership, restaurants to deny service to Black 
Americans, or businesses seeking employees to post some-
thing like a “White Applicants Only” sign. Post, at 603, 618– 
623, 627–628, 629, 634, and n. 13, 638–639. Pure fction all. 
5 Why does the dissent try to refocus this case around the Communica-
tion Clause? Perhaps because the moment one acknowledges the parties' 
stipulations—and the fact Colorado seeks to use its Accommodation Clause 
to compel speech in order to ensure conformity to its own views on a topic 
of major signifcance—the First Amendment implications become obvious. 
As does the fact that our case is nothing like a typical application of a 
public accommodations law requiring an ordinary, non-expressive business 
to serve all customers or consider all applicants. Our decision today does 
not concern—much less endorse—anything like the “ `straight couples 
only' ” notices the dissent conjures out of thin air. Post, at 628, n. 10. 
Nor do the parties discuss anything of the sort in their stipulations. 
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Opinion of the Court 
In some places, the dissent gets so turned around about 
the facts that it opens fre on its own position. For instance: 
While stressing that a Colorado company cannot refuse “the 
full and equal enjoyment of [its] services” based on a custom-
er's protected status, post, at 628, the dissent assures us that 
a company selling creative services “to the public” does have 
a right “to decide what messages to include or not to in-
clude,” post, at 629. But if that is true, what are we even 
debating? 
Instead of addressing the parties' stipulations about the 
case actually before us, the dissent spends much of its time 
adrift on a sea of hypotheticals about photographers, statio-
ners, and others, asking if they too provide expressive serv-
ices covered by the First Amendment. Post, at 629–630, 
632–634, 638–639. But those cases are not this case. 
Doubtless, determining what qualifes as expressive activity 
protected by the First Amendment can sometimes raise dif-
fcult questions. But this case presents no complication of 
that kind. The parties have stipulated that Ms. Smith seeks 
to engage in expressive activity. And the Tenth Circuit has 
recognized her services involve “pure speech.” See supra, 
at 583, 587. Nothing the dissent says can alter this—nor 
can it displace the First Amendment protections that follow. 
The dissent's treatment of precedent parallels its handling 
of the facts. Take its remarkable suggestion that a govern-
ment forcing an individual to create speech on weighty issues 
with which she disagrees—all, as the Tenth Circuit found, 
with the goal of “[e]liminating” views it does not share, 6 
F. 4th, at 1178—only “incidental[ly]” burdens First Amend-
ment liberties. Post, at 627–636. Far from embracing a no-
tion like that, our cases have rejected it time after time— 
including in the context of public accommodations laws. See 
Parts II–IV , supra; FAIR, 547 U. S., at 61–64 (no govern-
ment may affect a “speaker's own message” by “forc[ing]” 
her to “accommodate” views she does not hold); Hurley, 515

600 303 CREATIVE LLC v. ELENIS 
Opinion of the Court 
U. S., at 563, 566 (using a public accommodations law to com-
pel parade organizers to include speech they did not believe 
was no mere “ `incidental' ” infringement on First Amend-
ment rights); Dale, 530 U. S., at 659 (employing a public ac-
commodations law to require the Boy Scouts to alter their 
admissions policies had more than “an incidental effect on 
protected speech”).
6 
When it fnally gets around to discussing these controlling 
precedents, the dissent offers a wholly unpersuasive attempt 
to distinguish them. The First Amendment protections fur-
nished in Barnette, Hurley, and Dale, the dissent declares, 
were limited to schoolchildren and “nonproft[s],” and it is 
“dispiriting” to think they might also apply to Ms. Smith's 
“commercial” activity. Post, at 634–636. But our prece-
dents endorse nothing like the limits the dissent would project 
on them. Instead, as we have seen, the First Amendment ex-
tends to all persons engaged in expressive conduct, including 
those who seek proft (such as speechwriters, artists, and 
website designers). See supra, at 594. If anything is 
truly dispiriting here, it is the dissent's failure to take seri-
ously this Court's enduring commitment to protecting the 
6 The dissent observes that public accommodations laws may some-
times touch on speech incidentally as they work to ensure ordinary, non-
expressive goods and services are sold on equal terms. Cf. post, at 625– 
629 (citing Sorrell v. IMS Health Inc., 564 U. S. 552 (2011); Rumsfeld v. 
FAIR, 547 U. S. 47 (2006); United States v. O'Brien, 391 U. S. 367 (1968)). 
But as Hurley observed, there is nothing “incidental” about an infringe-
ment on speech when a public accommodations law is applied “peculiar[ly]” 
to compel expressive activity. Hurley v. Irish-American Gay, Lesbian 
and Bisexual Group of Boston, Inc., 515 U. S. 557, 572 (1995). The dis-
sent notes that our case law has not sustained every First Amendment 
objection to an antidiscrimination rule, as with a law frm that sought to 
exclude women from partnership. Post, at 621–623 (citing Hishon v. 
King & Spalding, 467 U. S. 69 (1984); Roberts v. United States Jaycees, 468 
U. S. 609 (1984)). But the dissent disregards Dale's holding that context 
matters and that very different considerations come into play when a law 
is used to force individuals to toe the government's preferred line when 
speaking (or associating to express themselves) on matters of signifcance. 
Boy Scouts of America v. Dale, 530 U. S. 640, 648–653 (2000). 
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Opinion of the Court 
speech rights of all comers, no matter how controversial—or 
even repugnant—many may fnd the message at hand. 
Finally, the dissent comes out and says what it really 
means: Once Ms. Smith offers some speech, Colorado 
“would require [her] to create and sell speech, notwithstand-
ing [her] sincere objection to doing so”—and the dissent 
would force her to comply with that demand. Post, at 631. 
Even as it does so, however, the dissent refuses to acknowl-
edge where its reasoning leads. In a world like that, as 
Chief Judge Tymkovich highlighted, governments could 
force “an unwilling Muslim movie director to make a flm 
with a Zionist message,” they could compel “an atheist mu-
ralist to accept a commission celebrating Evangelical zeal,” 
and they could require a gay website designer to create web-
sites for a group advocating against same-sex marriage, so 
long as these speakers would accept commissions from the 
public with different messages. 6 F. 4th, at 1199 (dissenting 
opinion). Perhaps the dissent fnds these possibilities un-
troubling because it trusts state governments to coerce only 
“enlightened” speech. But if that is the calculation, it is a 
dangerous one indeed.
7 
The dissent is right about one thing—“[w]hat a difference” 
time can make. See post, at 604 (internal quotation marks 
omitted). Eighty years ago in Barnette, this Court affrmed 
that “no offcial, high or petty, can prescribe what shall be 
7 Perhaps the dissent fnds these possibilities untroubling for another 
reason. It asserts that CADA does not apply to “[m]any flmmakers, vis-
ual artists, and writers” because they do not “hold out” their services to 
the public. Post, at 629. But the dissent cites nothing to support its 
claim and instead, once more, fghts the facts. As we have seen, Colora-
do's law today applies to “ any place of business engaged in any sales to 
the public.” Colo. Rev. Stat. § 24–34–601(1) (emphasis added); see also 
Part III, supra. And the dissent can hardly dispute that many artists 
and writers accept commissions from the public. Brief for Creative Pro-
fessionals et al. as Amici Curiae 5–21. Certainly, Colorado does not ad-
vance anything like the dissent's argument; it calls any exemption to its 
law for “artists” and others who provide “custom” services “unworkable.” 
Brief for Respondents 28–31 (internal quotation marks omitted). 
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602 303 CREATIVE LLC v. ELENIS 
Opinion of the Court 
orthodox in politics, nationalism, religion, or other matters 
of opinion.” 319 U. S., at 642. The Court did so despite the 
fact that the speech rights it defended were deeply unpopu-
lar; at the time, the world was at war and many thought 
respect for the fag and the pledge “essential for the welfare 
of the state.” Id., at 662–663 (Frankfurter, J., dissenting); 
see also id., at 636, 640 (majority opinion). Fifty years ago, 
this Court protected the right of Nazis to march through a 
town home to many Holocaust survivors and along the way 
espouse ideas antithetical to those for which this Nation 
stands. See Skokie, 432 U. S., at 43–44; supra, at 595. Five 
years ago, in a case the dissenters highlight at the outset of 
their opinion, the Court stressed that “it is not . . . the role of 
the State or its offcials to prescribe what shall be offensive.” 
Masterpiece Cakeshop, 584 U. S., at –––. And just days ago, 
Members of today's dissent joined in holding that the First 
Amendment restricts how States may prosecute stalkers de-
spite the “harm[ful],” “low-value,” and “upsetting” nature of 
their speech. Counterman v. Colorado, 600 U. S. 66, 74 
(2023); id., at 86–87 (Sotomayor , J., concurring in part and 
concurring in judgment). 
Today, however, the dissent abandons what this Court's 
cases have recognized time and time again: A commitment 
to speech for only some messages and some persons is no 
commitment at all. By approving a government's effort to 
“[e]liminat[e]” disfavored “ideas,” 6 F. 4th, at 1178, today's 
dissent is emblematic of an unfortunate tendency by some 
to defend First Amendment values only when they fnd the 
speaker's message sympathetic. But “[i]f liberty means 
anything at all, it means the right to tell people what they 
do not want to hear.” Id. , at 1190 (Tymkovich, C. J., 
dissenting) (quoting G. Orwell). 
* 
In this case, Colorado seeks to force an individual to speak 
in ways that align with its views but defy her conscience 
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Sotomayor, J., dissenting 
about a matter of major signifcance. In the past, other 
States in Barnette, Hurley, and Dale have similarly tested 
the First Amendment's boundaries by seeking to compel 
speech they thought vital at the time. But, as this Court 
has long held, the opportunity to think for ourselves and to 
express those thoughts freely is among our most cherished 
liberties and part of what keeps our Republic strong. Of 
course, abiding the Constitution's commitment to the free-
dom of speech means all of us will encounter ideas we con-
sider “unattractive,” post, at 640 (opinion of Sotomayor, J.), 
“misguided, or even hurtful,” Hurley, 515 U. S., at 574. But 
tolerance, not coercion, is our Nation's answer. The First 
Amendment envisions the United States as a rich and com-
plex place where all persons are free to think and speak as 
they wish, not as the government demands. Because Colo-
rado seeks to deny that promise, the judgment is 
Reversed. 
Justice Sotomayor , with whom Justice Kagan and 
Justice Jackson join, dissenting. 
Five years ago, this Court recognized the “general rule” 
that religious and philosophical objections to gay marriage 
“do not allow business owners and other actors in the econ-
omy and in society to deny protected persons equal access to 
goods and services under a neutral and generally applicable 
public accommodations law.” Masterpiece Cakeshop, Ltd. v. 
Colorado Civil Rights Comm'n, 584 U. S. –––, ––– (2018). 
The Court also recognized the “serious stigma” that would 
result if “purveyors of goods and services who object to gay 
marriages for moral and religious reasons” were “allowed to 
put up signs saying `no goods or services will be sold if they 
will be used for gay marriages.' ” Id., at –––. 
Today, the Court, for the frst time in its history, grants a 
business open to the public a constitutional right to refuse to 
serve members of a protected class. Specifcally, the Court 
holds that the First Amendment exempts a website-design 
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604 303 CREATIVE LLC v. ELENIS 
Sotomayor, J., dissenting 
company from a state law that prohibits the company from 
denying wedding websites to same-sex couples if the com-
pany chooses to sell those websites to the public. The Court 
also holds that the company has a right to post a notice that 
says, “ `no [wedding websites] will be sold if they will be used 
for gay marriages.' ” Ibid. 
“What a difference fve years makes.” Carson v. Makin, 
596 U. S. –––, ––– (2022) (Sotomayor , J., dissenting). And 
not just at the Court. Around the country, there has been 
a backlash to the movement for liberty and equality for gen-
der and sexual minorities. New forms of inclusion have 
been met with reactionary exclusion. This is heartbreaking. 
Sadly, it is also familiar. When the civil rights and women's 
rights movements sought equality in public life, some public 
establishments refused. Some even claimed, based on sin-
cere religious beliefs, constitutional rights to discriminate. 
The brave Justices who once sat on this Court decisively re-
jected those claims. 
Now the Court faces a similar test. A business open to the 
public seeks to deny gay and lesbian customers the full and 
equal enjoyment of its services based on the owner's religious 
belief that same-sex marriages are “false.” The business ar-
gues, and a majority of the Court agrees, that because the busi-
ness offers services that are customized and expressive, the 
Free Speech Clause of the First Amendment shields the busi-
ness from a generally applicable law that prohibits discrimina-
tion in the sale of publicly available goods and services. That 
is wrong. Profoundly wrong. As I will explain, the law in 
question targets conduct, not speech, for regulation, and the 
act of discrimination has never constituted protected expres-
sion under the First Amendment. Our Constitution contains 
no right to refuse service to a disfavored group. I dissent. 
I 
A 
A “public accommodations law” is a law that guarantees to 
every person the full and equal enjoyment of places of public 
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Sotomayor, J., dissenting 
accommodation without unjust discrimination. The Ameri-
can people, through their elected representatives, have 
enacted such laws at all levels of government: The federal 
Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Americans with Disabilities 
Act of 1990 prohibit discrimination by places of public accom-
modation on the basis of race, color, religion, national origin, 
or disability.
1 All but fve States have analogous laws that 
prohibit discrimination on the basis of these and other traits, 
such as age, sex, sexual orientation, and gender identity.
2 
And numerous local laws offer similar protections. 
The people of Colorado have adopted the Colorado Anti-
Discrimination Act (CADA), which provides: 
1 See 42 U. S. C. § 2000a et seq. (Title II of Civil Rights Act of 1964); 
42 U. S. C. § 12181 et seq. (Title III of Americans with Disabilities Act 
of 1990). 
2 See Alaska Stat. § 18.80.230 (2023); Ariz. Rev. Stat. Ann. § 41–1442 
(2017); Ark. Code Ann. § 16–123–107 (Supp. 2021); Cal. Civ. Code Ann. § 51 
(West 2020); Colo. Rev. Stat. § 24–34–601 (2022); Conn. Gen. Stat. §§ 46a– 
64, 46a–81d (Cum. Supp. 2023); Del. Code Ann., Tit. 6, § 4504 (Cum. Supp. 
2022); Fla. Stat. §§ 413.08, 760.08 (2022); Haw. Rev. Stat. § 489–3 (Cum. 
Supp. 2021); Idaho Code Ann. § 67–5909 (2020); Ill. Comp. Stat., ch. 775, 
§ 5/1–102 (West Supp. 2021); Ind. Code § 22–9–1–2 (2022); Iowa Code § 216.7 
(2023); Kan. Stat. Ann. § 44–1001 (2021); Ky. Rev. Stat. Ann. §§ 344.120, 
344.145 (West 2018); La. Rev. Stat. Ann. § 51:2247 (West Cum. Supp. 2023); 
Me. Rev. Stat. Ann., Tit. 5, § 4591 (Cum. Supp. 2023); Md. State Govt. Code 
Ann. § 20–304 (2021); Mass. Gen. Laws, ch. 272, § 98 (2020); Mich. Comp. 
Laws §§ 37.1102, 37.2302 (1981), as amended, 2023 Mich. Pub. Acts no. 6 
(sine die); Minn. Stat. § 363A.11 (2022); Mo. Rev. Stat. § 213.065 (Cum. 
Supp. 2021); Mont. Code Ann. § 49–2–304 (2021); Neb. Rev. Stat. § 20–134 
(2022); Nev. Rev. Stat. § 651.070 (2017); N. H. Rev. Stat. Ann. § 354–A:17 
(2022); N. J. Stat. Ann. § 10:5–12 (West Cum. Supp. 2023); N. M. Stat. Ann. 
§ 28–1–7 (2022); N. Y . Civ. Rights Law Ann. § 40 (West 2019); N. D. Cent. 
Code Ann. § 14–02.4–14 (2017); Ohio Rev. Code Ann. § 4112.02 (Lexis Supp. 
2023); Okla. Stat., Tit. 25, § 1402 (2011); Ore. Rev. Stat. § 659A.403 (2021); 
Pa. Stat. Ann., Tit. 43, § 953 (Purdon 2020); R. I. Gen. Laws § 11–24–2 
(2002); S. C. Code Ann. § 45–9–10 (2016); S. D. Codifed Laws § 20–13–23 
(2016); Tenn. Code Ann. § 4–21–501 (2021); Utah Code § 13–7–3 (2022); Vt. 
Stat. Ann., Tit. 9, § 4502 (2020); Va. Code Ann. § 2.2–3904 (2022); Wash. 
Rev. Code § 49.60.215 (2022); W. Va. Code Ann. § 5–11–2 (Lexis 2022); Wis. 
Stat. § 106.52 (2019–2020); Wyo. Stat. Ann. § 6–9–101 (2021).

606 303 CREATIVE LLC v. ELENIS 
Sotomayor, J., dissenting 
“It is a discriminatory practice and unlawful for a per-
son, directly or indirectly, to refuse, withhold from, or 
deny to an individual or a group, because of disability, 
race, creed, color, sex, sexual orientation, gender iden-
tity, gender expression, marital status, national origin, 
or ancestry, the full and equal enjoyment of the goods, 
services, facilities, privileges, advantages, or accommo-
dations of a place of public accommodation.” Colo. Rev. 
Stat. § 24–34–601(2)(a). 
This provision, known as the Act's “Accommodation Clause,” 
applies to any business engaged in sales “to the public.” 
§ 24–34–601(1). The Accommodation Clause does not apply 
to any “church, synagogue, mosque, or other place that is 
principally used for religious purposes.” Ibid. 
In addition, CADA contains what is referred to as the 
Act's “Communication Clause,” which makes it unlawful to 
advertise that services “will be refused, withheld from, or 
denied,” or that an individual is “unwelcome” at a place of 
public accommodation, based on the same protected traits. 
§ 24–34–601(2)(a). In other words, just as a business open 
to the public may not refuse to serve customers based on 
race, religion, or sexual orientation, so too the business may 
not hang a sign that says, “No Blacks, No Muslims, No Gays.” 
A public accommodations law has two core purposes. 
First, the law ensures “equal access to publicly available 
goods and services.” Roberts v. United States Jaycees, 468 
U. S. 609, 624 (1984) (emphasis added). For social groups 
that face discrimination, such access is vital. All the more 
so if the group is small in number or if discrimination against 
the group is widespread. Equal access is mutually bene-
fcial: Protected persons receive “equally effective and mean-
ingful opportunity to beneft from all aspects of life in 
America,” 135 Cong. Rec. 8506 (1989) (remarks of Sen. 
Harkin) (Americans with Disabilities Act), and “society,” 
in return, receives “the benefts of wide participation in 
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Sotomayor, J., dissenting 
political, economic, and cultural life.” Roberts, 468 U. S., 
at 625. 
Second, a public accommodations law ensures equal dig-
nity in the common market. Indeed, that is the law's “fun-
damental object”: “to vindicate `the deprivation of personal 
dignity that surely accompanies denials of equal access to 
public establishments.' ” Heart of Atlanta Motel, Inc. v. 
United States, 379 U. S. 241, 250 (1964) (quoting S. Rep. No. 
872, 88th Cong., 2d Sess., 16 (1964)). This purpose does not 
depend on whether goods or services are otherwise avail-
able. “ `Discrimination is not simply dollars and cents, ham-
burgers and movies; it is the humiliation, frustration, and 
embarrassment that a person must surely feel when he is 
told that he is unacceptable as a member of the public be-
cause of his [social identity]. It is equally the inability to 
explain to a child that regardless of education, civility, cour-
tesy, and morality he will be denied the right to enjoy equal 
treatment.' ” 379 U. S., at 292 (Goldberg, J., concurring). 
When a young Jewish girl and her parents come across a 
business with a sign out front that says, “ `No dogs or Jews 
allowed,' ” 
3 the fact that another business might serve her 
family does not redress that “stigmatizing injury,” Roberts, 
468 U. S., at 625. Or, put another way, “the hardship Jackie 
Robinson suffered when on the road” with his baseball team 
“was not an inability to fnd some hotel that would have him; 
it was the indignity of not being allowed to stay in the same 
hotel as his white teammates.” J. Oleske, The Evolution of 
Accommodation, 50 Harv. Civ. Rights-Civ. Lib. L. Rev. 99, 
138 (2015). 
To illustrate, imagine a funeral home in rural Mississippi 
agrees to transport and cremate the body of an elderly man 
who has passed away, and to host a memorial lunch. Upon 
3 Hearings on the Nomination of Ruth Bader Ginsburg To Be Associate 
Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States before the Senate Com-
mittee on the Judiciary, 103d Cong., 1st Sess., 139 (1993). 
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learning that the man's surviving spouse is also a man, how-
ever, the funeral home refuses to deal with the family. Grief 
stricken, and now isolated and humiliated, the family desper-
ately searches for another funeral home that will take the 
body. They eventually fnd one more than 70 miles away. 
See First Amended Complaint in Zawadski v. Brewer Fu-
neral Services, Inc., No. 55CI1–17–cv–00019 (C. C. Pearl 
River Cty., Miss., Mar. 7, 2017), pp. 4–7.
4 This ostracism, 
this otherness, is among the most distressing feelings that 
can be felt by our social species. K. Williams, Ostracism, 58 
Ann. Rev. Psychology 425, 432–435 (2007). 
Preventing the “unique evils” caused by “acts of invidious 
discrimination in the distribution of publicly available goods, 
services, and other advantages” is a compelling state interest 
“of the highest order.” Roberts, 468 U. S., at 624, 628; see 
Board of Directors of Rotary Int'l v. Rotary Club of Duarte , 
481 U. S. 537, 549 (1987). Moreover, a law that prohibits 
only such acts by businesses open to the public is narrowly 
tailored to achieve that compelling interest. The law “re-
sponds precisely to the substantive problem which legiti-
mately concerns the State”: the harm from status-based dis-
crimination in the public marketplace. Roberts, 468 U. S., 
at 629 (internal quotation marks omitted). 
This last aspect of a public accommodations law deserves 
special emphasis: The law regulates only businesses that 
choose to sell goods or services “to the general public,” e. g., 
Va. Code Ann. § 2.2–3904, or “to the public,” e. g., Mich. 
4 The men in this story are Robert “Bob” Huskey and John “Jack” Za-
wadski. Bob and Jack were a loving couple of 52 years. They moved 
from California to Colorado to care for Bob's mother, then to Wisconsin to 
farm apples and teach special education, and then to Mississippi to retire. 
Within weeks of this Court's decision in Obergefell v. Hodges, 576 U. S. 
644 (2015), Bob and Jack got married. They were 85 and 81 years old on 
their wedding day. A few months later, Bob's health took a turn. He 
died the following spring. When Bob's family was forced to fnd an alter-
native funeral home more than an hour from where Bob and Jack lived, 
the lunch in Bob's memory had to be canceled. Jack died the next year. 
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Sotomayor, J., dissenting 
Comp. Laws § 37.2301. Some public accommodations laws, 
such as the federal Civil Rights Act, list establishments that 
qualify, but these establishments are ones open to the public 
generally. See, e. g., 42 U. S. C. § 2000a(b) (hotels, restau-
rants, gas stations, movie theaters, concert halls, sports are-
nas, stadiums). A public accommodations law does not force 
anyone to start a business, or to hold out the business's goods 
or services to the public at large. The law also does not 
compel any business to sell any particular good or service. 
But if a business chooses to proft from the public market, 
which is established and maintained by the state, the state 
may require the business to abide by a legal norm of non-
discrimination. In particular, the state may ensure that 
groups historically marked for second-class status are not 
denied goods or services on equal terms. 
The concept of a public accommodation thus embodies a 
simple, but powerful, social contract: A business that chooses 
to sell to the public assumes a duty to serve the public 
without unjust discrimination. J. Singer, No Right To Ex-
clude: Public Accommodations and Private Property, 90 Nw. 
U. L. Rev. 1283, 1298 (1996) (Singer). 
B 
The legal duty of a business open to the public to serve 
the public without unjust discrimination is deeply rooted in 
our history. The true power of this principle, however, lies 
in its capacity to evolve, as society comes to understand more 
forms of unjust discrimination and, hence, to include more 
persons as full and equal members of “the public.” 
1 
“At common law, innkeepers, smiths, and others who `made 
profession of a public employment,' were prohibited from re-
fusing, without good reason, to serve a customer.” Hurley 
v. Irish-American Gay, Lesbian and Bisexual Group of Bos-
ton, Inc., 515 U. S. 557, 571 (1995) (quoting Lane v. Cotton, 
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12 Mod. 472, 485, 88 Eng. Rep. 1458, 1465 (K. B. 1701) (Holt, 
C. J.)). “Public employment” meant a business “in which the 
owner has held himself out as ready to serve the public by 
exercising his trade.” Singer 1307; see, e. g., Gisbourn v. 
Hurst, 1 Salk. 249, 91 Eng. Rep. 220 (K. B. 1710). Take, for 
example, Lane v. Cotton, “[t]he leading English case” on the 
subject “cited over and over again in the nineteenth century 
in the United States.” Singer 1304. There, Lord Chief 
Justice Holt explained: 
“[W]here-ever any subject takes upon himself a public 
trust for the beneft of the rest of his fellow-subjects, he 
is eo ipso bound to serve the subject in all the things 
that are within the reach and comprehension of such an 
offce, under pain of an action against him. . . . If on the 
road a shoe fall off my horse, and I come to a smith to 
have one put on, and the smith refuse to do it, an action 
will lie against him, because he has made profession of 
a trade which is for the public good, and has thereby 
exposed and vested an interest of himself in all the 
King's subjects that will employ him in the way of his 
trade.” Lane v. Cotton, 12 Mod., at 484, 88 Eng. Rep., 
at 1464. 
That is to say, a business's duty to serve all comers derived 
from its choice to hold itself out as ready to serve the public. 
This holding-out rationale became frmly established in early 
American law. See 2 J. Kent, Commentaries on American 
Law 464–465 (1827); J. Story, Commentaries on the Law of 
Bailments §§ 495, 591 (1832); see also, e. g., Markham v. 
Brown, 8 N. H. 523, 528 (1837); Jencks v. Coleman, 13 F. Cas. 
442, 443 (No. 7,258) (CC RI 1835) (Story, J.); Dwight v. Brew-
ster, 18 Mass. 50, 53 (1822). 
The majority is therefore mistaken to suggest that public 
accommodations or common carriers historically assumed 
duties to serve all comers because they enjoyed monopolies 
or otherwise had market power. Ante, at 590. Tellingly, the 
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Sotomayor, J., dissenting 
majority cites no common-law case espousing the monopoly 
rationale.5 That is because nowhere in the relevant case law 
“is monopoly suggested as the distinguishing characteristic.” 
E. Adler, Business Jurisprudence, 28 Harv. L. Rev. 135, 156 
(1914) (“A distinction based on monopoly would require proof 
that the common carrier had some kind of a monopoly which 
the private carrier did not have, or that `common' was synon-
ymous with `monopoly.' The plain meaning of the cases is 
[instead that] the common was the public, the professional, 
the business carrier or other trader”).
6 
2 
After the Civil War, some States codifed the common-law 
duty of public accommodations to serve all comers. See M. 
Konvitz & T. Leskes, A Century of Civil Rights 155–157 
(1961). Early state public accommodations statutes prohib-
ited discrimination based on race or color. Yet the principle 
was at times stated more broadly: to provide “a remedy 
against any unjust discrimination to the citizen in all public 
places.” Ferguson v. Gies, 82 Mich. 358, 365, 46 N. W. 718, 
5 For example, a case on which the majority relies found that it could 
“shortly dispos[e]” of the question whether a steamship company was a 
common carrier because the company was “the owner of a general ship, 
carrying goods for hire . . . and perform[ing]” that service “regular[ly].” 
Liverpool & Great Western Steam Co. v. Phenix Ins. Co., 129 U. S. 397, 
437 (1889). No showing of market power was required. Ibid. 
6 Nor does “host[ing] or transport[ing] others and their belongings,” 
ante, at 590, explain the right of access. Smiths, for instance, did not al-
ways practice their trade by holding property for others. And even when 
they did, any duty of care resulting from such bailment cannot explain the 
duty to serve all comers, which logically must be assumed beforehand. 
See Lane v. Cotton, 12 Mod. 472, 484, 88 Eng. Rep. 1458, 1464 (K. B. 1701) 
(Holt, C. J.). That duty instead came from somewhere else, and the 
weight of authority indicates that it came from a business's act of holding 
itself out to the public as ready to serve anyone who would hire it. Singer 
1304–1330; 3 W. Blackstone, Commentaries on the Laws of England 164 
(1768); J. Story, Commentaries on the Law of Bailments §§ 495, 591 (1837); 
1 T. Parsons, Law of Contracts 639, 643, 649 (1853). 
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720 (1890). In 1885, Colorado adopted “ `An Act to Protect 
All Citizens in Their Civil Rights,' which guaranteed `full 
and equal enjoyment' of certain public facilities to `all citi-
zens,' `regardless of race, color or previous condition of servi-
tude.' ” Masterpiece Cakeshop, 584 U. S., at ––– – ––– (quot-
ing 1885 Colo. Sess. Laws p. 132). “A decade later, the 
[State] expanded the requirement to apply to `all other places 
of public accommodation.' ” 584 U. S., at ––– (quoting 1895 
Colo. Sess. Laws ch. 61, p. 139). Congress, too, passed the 
Civil Rights Act of 1875, which established “[t]hat all persons 
within the jurisdiction of the United States shall be entitled 
to the full and equal enjoyment of the accommodations, ad-
vantages, facilities, and privileges of inns, public conveyances 
on land or water, theaters, and other places of public amuse-
ment . . . applicable alike to citizens of every race and color, 
regardless of any previous condition of servitude.” Act of 
Mar. 1, 1875, § 1, 18 Stat. 336. 
This Court, however, struck down the federal Civil Rights 
Act of 1875 as unconstitutional. Civil Rights Cases, 109 
U. S. 3, 25 (1883). Southern States repealed public accom-
modations statutes and replaced them with Jim Crow laws. 
And state courts construed any remaining right of access in 
ways that furthered de jure and de facto racial segregation.
7 
Full and equal enjoyment came to mean “separate but equal” 
enjoyment. The result of this backsliding was “the replace-
ment of a general right of access with a general right to 
exclude . . . in order to promote a racial caste system.” 
Singer 1295. 
7 Compare, e. g., Chesapeake, O. & S. R. Co. v. Wells, 85 Tenn. 613, 615, 
4 S. W. 5 (1887) (rejecting Ida B. Wells's claim that she was denied “ `ac-
commodations equal in all respects,' ” when she tried to enter a train car 
“set apart for white ladies and their gentlemen” on account of tobacco 
smoke in her car, and was forcibly removed), with Memphis & C. R. Co. v. 
Benson, 85 Tenn. 627, 632, 4 S. W. 5, 7 (1887) (accepting that a white man 
would be permitted to ride standing in the ladies' car on account of tobacco 
smoke in his car). 
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Sotomayor, J., dissenting 
In time, the civil rights movement of the mid-20th century 
again demanded racial equality in public places. In 1963, 
two decades after then–Howard University law student Pauli 
Murray organized sit-ins at cafeterias in Washington, D. C., 
a diverse group of students and faculty from Tougaloo Col-
lege sat at Woolworth's lunch counter in Jackson, Mississippi. 
For doing so, they were violently attacked by a white mob. 
See A. Moody, Coming of Age in Mississippi 235–240 (1992). 
Around the country, similar acts of protest against racial in-
justice, some big and some small, sought “to create such a cri-
sis and foster such a tension” that the country would be “forced 
to confront the issue.” M. King, Letter from a Birmingham 
Jail, Apr. 16, 1963. That year, Congress once more set out to 
eradicate “discrimination . . . in places of accommodation and 
public facilities,” Heart of Atlanta Motel, 379 U. S., at 246, 
notwithstanding this Court's previous declaration of a fed-
eral public accommodations law to be unconstitutional. 
Congress believed, rightly, that discrimination in places of 
public accommodation—“the injustice of being arbitrarily de-
nied equal access to those facilities and accommodations 
which are otherwise open to the general public”—had “no 
place” in this country, the country “of the melting pot, of 
equal rights, of one nation and one people.” S. Rep. No. 872, 
at 8–9 (quoting President Kennedy, June 19, 1963). It there-
fore passed Title II of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which 
declares: “All persons shall be entitled to the full and equal 
enjoyment of the goods, services, facilities, privileges, advan-
tages, and accommodations of any place of public accommo-
dation . . . without discrimination . . . on the ground of race, 
color, religion, or national origin.” 42 U. S. C. § 2000a. In 
enacting this landmark civil rights statute, Congress invoked 
the holding-out rationale from antebellum common law: “one 
who employed his private property for purposes of commer-
cial gain by offering goods or services to the public must 
stick to his bargain.” S. Rep. No. 872, at 22; see also id., at 
9–10 (endorsing Lord Holt's view in Lane v. Cotton). 
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This bargain, America would soon realize, had long ex-
cluded half of society. Women, though having won the right 
to vote half a century earlier, were not equal in public. In-
stead, a “separate-spheres ideology” had “assigned women 
to the home and men to the market.” E. Sepper & D. Din-
ner, Sex in Public, 129 Yale L. J. 78, 83, 88–90 (2019) (Sep-
per & Dinner). Women were excluded from restaurants, 
bars, civic and professional organizations, fnancial institu-
tions, and sports. “Just as it did for the civil rights strug-
gle, public accommodations served as kindling for feminist 
mobilization.” Id., at 83, 97–104; cf. S. Mayeri, Reasoning 
From Race: Feminism, Law, and the Civil Rights Revolution 
9–40 (2011). In response to a movement for women's libera-
tion, numerous States banned discrimination in public accom-
modations on the basis of “sex.” See Sepper & Dinner 104, 
nn. 145–147 (collecting statutes). Colorado was the frst 
State to do so. See 1969 Colo. Sess. Laws ch. 74, p. 200. 
In the decades that followed, the Nation opened its eyes 
to another injustice. People with disabilities, though inher-
ently full and equal members of the public, had been ex-
cluded from many areas of public life. This exclusion 
worked harms not only to disabled people's standards of liv-
ing, but to their dignity too. So Congress, responding once 
again to a social movement, this time against the subordina-
tion of people with disabilities, banned discrimination on that 
basis and secured by law disabled people's equal access to 
public spaces. See S. Bagenstos, Law and the Contradic-
tions of the Disability Rights Movement 13–20 (2009); R. Col-
ker, The Disability Pendulum 22–68 (2005). The centerpiece 
of this political and social action was the Americans with 
Disabilities Act of 1990 (ADA). Title III of the ADA pro-
vides that “[n]o individual shall be discriminated against on 
the basis of disability in the full and equal enjoyment of 
the goods, services, facilities, privileges, advantages, or ac-
commodations of any place of public accommodation.” 42 
U. S. C. § 12182(a). 
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Sotomayor, J., dissenting 
Not only have public accommodations laws expanded to 
recognize more forms of unjust discrimination, such as dis-
crimination based on race, sex, and disability, such laws have 
also expanded to include more goods and services as “public 
accommodations.” What began with common inns, carriers, 
and smiths has grown to include restaurants, bars, movie 
theaters, sports arenas, retail stores, salons, gyms, hospitals, 
funeral homes, and transportation networks. See nn. 1–2, 
supra; L. Lerman & A. Sanderson, Discrimination in Access 
to Public Places: A Survey of State and Federal Public Ac-
commodations Laws, 7 N. Y . U. Rev. L. & Soc. Change 215, 
217 (1978) (“ `Public accommodations' is a term of art which 
was developed by the drafters of discrimination laws to refer 
to [public] places other than schools, work places, and 
homes”). Today, laws like Colorado's cover “any place of 
business engaged in any sales to the public and any place 
offering services . . . to the public.” Colo. Rev. Stat. § 24– 
34–601(1); see also, e. g., Ohio Rev. Code Ann. § 4112.01(9). 
Numerous other States extend such protections to busi-
nesses offering goods or services to “the general public.” 
Ariz. Rev. Stat. Ann. § 41–1441(2); see also, e. g., Mass. Gen. 
Laws, ch. 272, § 92A. 
This broader scope, though more inclusive than earlier 
state public accommodations laws, is in keeping with the fun-
damental principle—rooted in the common law, but alive and 
blossoming in statutory law—that the duty to serve without 
unjust discrimination is owed to everyone, and it extends to 
any business that holds itself out as ready to serve the public. 
If you have ever taken advantage of a public business with-
out being denied service because of who you are, then you 
have come to enjoy the dignity and freedom that this princi-
ple protects. 
3 
Lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) people, no 
less than anyone else, deserve that dignity and free -
dom. The movement for LGBT rights, and the resulting 
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expansion of state and local laws to secure gender and sexual 
minorities' full and equal enjoyment of publicly available 
goods and services, is the latest chapter of this great Ameri-
can story. 
LGBT people have existed for all of human history. And 
as sure as they have existed, others have sought to deny 
their existence, and to exclude them from public life. Those 
who would subordinate LGBT people have often done so 
with the backing of law. For most of American history, 
there were laws criminalizing same-sex intimacy. Oberge-
fell v. Hodges, 576 U. S. 644, 660–661 (2015). “Gays and les-
bians were [also] prohibited from most government em-
ployment, barred from military service, excluded under 
immigration laws, targeted by police, and burdened in their 
rights to associate.” Id., at 661. “These policies worked to 
create and reinforce the belief that gay men and lesbians” 
constituted “an inferior class.” Brief for Organization of 
American Historians as Amicus Curiae in Obergefell v. 
Hodges, O. T. 2014, No. 14–556, p. 3. 
State-sponsored discrimination was compounded by dis-
crimination in public accommodations, though the two often 
went hand in hand. The police raided bars looking for gays 
and lesbians so often that some bars put up signs saying, 
“ `We Do Not Serve Homosexuals.' ” Id., at 13 (quoting G. 
Chauncey, Why Marriage 8 (2004)). LGBT discrimination 
in public accommodations has continued well into the 21st 
century. See UCLA School of Law Williams Institute, C. 
Mallory & B. Sears, Evidence of Discrimination in Public Ac-
commodations Based on Sexual Orientation and Gender 
Identity (2016). 
A social system of discrimination created an environment 
in which LGBT people were unsafe. Who could forget the 
brutal murder of Matthew Shepard? Matthew was targeted 
by two men, tortured, tied to a buck fence, and left to die for 
who he was. See K. Drake, Gay Man Beaten, Burned and 
Left Tied to Fence, Casper Star-Tribune, Oct. 10, 1998, 
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Sotomayor, J., dissenting 
p. A1. Or the Pulse nightclub massacre, the second-
deadliest mass shooting in U. S. history? See S. Stolberg, 
For Gays Across America, a Massacre Punctuates Fitful 
Gains, N. Y . Times, June 13, 2016, p. A1. Rates of violent 
victimization are still signifcantly higher for LGBT people, 
with transgender persons particularly vulnerable to attack. 
See Dept. of Justice, J. Truman & R. Morgan, Violent Victim-
ization by Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity, 2017–2020 
(2022). 
Determined not to live as “social outcasts,” Masterpiece 
Cakeshop, 584 U. S., at –––, LGBT people have risen up. 
The social movement for LGBT rights has been long and 
complex. See L. Faderman, The Gay Revolution (2015) 
(Faderman). But if there ever was an “earthquake,” it oc-
curred in the fnal days of June in 1969 at the Stonewall Inn 
in Greenwich Village. Id., at 169. The Stonewall Inn was 
a gay bar with a “varied and lively clientele.” Id., at 171. 
Its “ `unruly' element” made it “an especially inviting target” 
for police raids. J. D'Emilio, Sexual Politics, Sexual Com-
munities 231 (1983) (D'Emilio). “Patrons of the Stonewall 
tended to be young and nonwhite. Many were drag 
queens. . . . ” Ibid. Just before midnight on June 27, the 
New York police's Public Morals Squad showed up to the bar 
and started making arrests. Drag queens, for example, 
were arrested for offenses like being “disguised” in “un-
natural attire.” N. Y . Penal Law Ann. § 240.35(4) (West 
1967). 
What started out as a fairly routine police raid, however, 
became anything but. Outside the Stonewall Inn, patrons 
who had been thrown out started to form a crowd. “Jeers 
and catcalls arose from the onlookers when a paddy wagon 
departed with the bartender, the Stonewall's bouncer, and 
three drag queens.” D'Emilio 231. “A few minutes later, 
an offcer attempted to steer the last of the patrons, a lesbian, 
through the bystanders to a nearby patrol car.” Id., at 231– 
232. When she started to struggle, protests erupted. 
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Sotomayor, J., dissenting 
They lasted into the night and continued into the next. 
News of the Stonewall protests “spread rapidly,” and “within 
a year gay liberation groups had sprung into existence on 
college campuses and in cities around the nation.” Id., at 
233. From there, the path to LGBT rights has not been 
quick or easy. Nor is it over. Still, change has come: 
change in social attitudes, in representation, and in legal in-
stitutions. Faderman 535–629. 
One signifcant change has been the addition of sexual ori-
entation and gender identity to public accommodations laws. 
State and local legislatures took note of the failure of such 
laws to protect LGBT people and, in response, acted to guar-
antee them “all the privileges . . . of any other member of 
society.” Hearings on S. B. 200 before the House Judiciary 
Committee, 66th Gen. Assem., 2d Reg. Sess., 4, 11–12 (Colo. 
2008) (remarks of Sen. Judd). Colorado thus amended its 
antidiscrimination law in 2008 to prohibit the denial of pub-
licly available goods or services on the basis of “sexual orien-
tation.” 2008 Colo. Sess. Laws. ch. 341, pp. 1596–1597. 
About half of the States now provide such protections.
8 
It is “ `unexceptional' ” that they may do so. Ante, at 591 
(quoting Masterpiece Cakeshop, 584 U. S., at –––). “These 
are protections taken for granted by most people either be-
cause they already have them or do not need them; these are 
protections against exclusion from an almost limitless 
number of transactions and endeavors that constitute ordi-
nary civic life in a free society.” Romer v. Evans, 517 U. S. 
8 See Cal. Civ. Code Ann. § 51; Colo. Rev. Stat. § 24–34–601; Conn. Gen. 
Stat. § 46a–81d; Del. Code Ann., Tit. 6, § 4504; Haw. Rev. Stat. § 489–3; Ill. 
Comp. Stat., ch. 775, § 5/1–102; Iowa Code § 216.7; Me. Rev. Stat. Ann., Tit. 
5, § 4591; Md. State Govt. Code Ann. § 20–304; Mass. Gen. Laws, ch. 272, 
§ 98; Mich. Comp. Laws § 37.2302, as amended; Minn. Stat. § 363A.11; Nev. 
Rev. Stat. § 651.070; N. H. Rev. Stat. Ann. § 354–A:17; N. J. Stat. Ann. 
§ 10:5–12; N. M. Stat. Ann. § 28–1–7; N. Y . Civ. Rights Law Ann. § 40; Ore. 
Rev. Stat. § 659A.403; R. I. Gen. Laws § 11–24–2; Vt. Stat. Ann., Tit. 9, 
§ 4502; Va. Code Ann. § 2.2–3904; Wash. Rev. Code § 49.60.215; Wis. Stat. 
§ 106.52.

Cite as: 600 U. S. 570 (2023) 619 
Sotomayor, J., dissenting 
620, 631 (1996). LGBT people do not seek any special 
treatment. All they seek is to exist in public. To inhabit 
public spaces on the same terms and conditions as everyone 
else. 
C 
Yet for as long as public accommodations laws have been 
around, businesses have sought exemptions from them. The 
civil rights and women's liberation eras are prominent exam-
ples of this. Backlashes to race and sex equality gave rise 
to legal claims of rights to discriminate, including claims 
based on First Amendment freedoms of expression and asso-
ciation. This Court was unwavering in its rejection of those 
claims, as invidious discrimination “has never been accorded 
affrmative constitutional protections.” Norwood v. Har-
rison, 413 U. S. 455, 470 (1973). In particular, the refusal to 
deal with or to serve a class of people is not an expressive 
interest protected by the First Amendment. 
1 
Opponents of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 objected that 
the law would force business owners to defy their beliefs. 
Cf. ante, at 580. They argued that the Act would deny them 
“any freedom to speak or to act on the basis of their religious 
convictions or their deep-rooted preferences for associating 
or not associating with certain classifcations of people.” 
110 Cong. Rec. 7778 (1964) (remarks of Sen. Tower). Con-
gress rejected those arguments. Title II of the Act, in 
particular, did not invade “rights of privacy [or] of free as-
sociation,” Congress concluded, because the establishments 
covered by the law were “those regularly held open to the 
public in general.” H. R. Rep. No. 914, 88th Cong., 1st Sess., 
pt. 2, p. 9 (1963); see also S. Rep. No. 872, at 92. 
Having failed to persuade Congress, opponents of Title II 
turned to the federal courts. In Heart of Atlanta Motel, 
one of several arguments made by the plaintiff motel owner 
was that Title II violated his Fifth Amendment due process 
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rights by “tak[ing] away the personal liberty of an individual 
to run his business as he sees ft with respect to the selection 
and service of his customers.” Brief for Appellant, O. T. 
1964, No. 515, p. 32. This Court disagreed, based on “a long 
line of cases” holding that “prohibition of racial discrimina-
tion in public accommodations” did not “interfer[e] with per-
sonal liberty.” 379 U. S., at 260. 
In Katzenbach v. McClung, 379 U. S. 294 (1964), the owner 
of Ollie's Barbecue (Ollie McClung) likewise argued that 
Title II's application to his business violated the “personal 
rights of persons in their personal convictions” to deny serv-
ices to Black people. Brief for Appellees, O. T. 1964, No. 
543, p. 33 (citing, inter alia, West Virginia Bd. of Ed. v. Bar-
nette, 319 U. S. 624 (1943)). Note that McClung did not re-
fuse to transact with Black people. Oh, no. He was willing 
to offer them take-out service at a separate counter. See 
Brief for NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, Inc., 
as Amicus Curiae in Katzenbach v. McClung, p. 4, n. 5. 
Only integrated table service, you see, violated McClung's 
core beliefs. So he claimed a constitutional right to offer 
Black people a limited menu of his services. This Court re-
jected that claim, citing its decision in Heart of Atlanta 
Motel. See 379 U. S., at 298, n. 1. 
Next is Newman v. Piggie Park Enterprises, Inc., 390 
U. S. 400 (1968) (per curiam ), in which the owner of a chain 
of drive-in establishments asserted that requiring him to 
“contribut[e]” to racial integration in any way violated the 
First Amendment by interfering with his religious liberty. 
App. to Pet. for Cert., O. T. 1967, No. 339, p. 21a. Title II 
could not be applied to his business, he argued, because that 
would “ `controven[e] the will of God.' ” 390 U. S., at 402– 
403, n. 5. The Court found this argument “patently frivo-
lous.” Ibid. 
Last but not least is Runyon v. McCrary, 427 U. S. 160 
(1976), a case the majority studiously avoids. In Runyon, 
the Court confronted the question whether “commercially 
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operated” schools had a First Amendment right to exclude 
Black children, notwithstanding a federal law against racial 
discrimination in contracting. Id., at 168; see 42 U. S. C. 
§ 1981. The schools in question offered “educational serv-
ices” for sale to “the general public.” 427 U. S., at 172. 
They argued that the law, as applied to them, violated their 
First Amendment rights of “freedom of speech, and associa-
tion.” Pet. for Cert., O. T. 1976, No. 75–62, p. 6; see also 
Brief for Petitioners, O. T. 1976, No. 75–62, p. 12 (“Freedom 
to teach, to express ideas”). The Court, however, reasoned 
that the schools' “practice” of denying educational services 
to racial minorities was not shielded by the First Amend-
ment, for two reasons: First, “the Constitution places no 
value on discrimination.” 427 U. S., at 176 (alterations and 
internal quotation marks omitted). Second, the govern-
ment's regulation of conduct did not “inhibit” the schools' 
ability to teach its preferred “ideas or dogma.” Ibid. (inter-
nal quotation marks omitted). Requiring the schools to 
abide by an antidiscrimination law was not the same thing 
as compelling the schools to express teachings contrary to 
their sincerely held “belief that racial segregation is desir-
able.” Ibid. 
2 
First Amendment rights of expression and association 
were also raised to challenge laws against sex discrimination. 
In Roberts v. United States Jaycees, the United States Jay-
cees sought an exemption from a Minnesota law that forbids 
discrimination on the basis of sex in public accommodations. 
The U. S. Jaycees was a civic organization, which until then 
had denied admission to women. The organization alleged 
that applying the law to require it to include women would 
violate its “members' constitutional rights of free speech and 
association.” 468 U. S., at 615. “The power of the state to 
change the membership of an organization is inevitably the 
power to change the way in which it speaks,” the Jaycees 
argued. Brief for Appellee, O. T. 1983, No. 83–724, p. 19 
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Sotomayor, J., dissenting 
(emphasis added). Thus, “the right of the Jaycees to decide 
its own membership” was “inseparable,” in its view, “from 
its ability to freely express itself.” Ibid. 
This Court took a different view. The Court held that the 
“application of the Minnesota statute to compel the Jaycees 
to accept women” did not infringe the organization's First 
Amendment “freedom of expressive association.” Roberts, 
468 U. S., at 622. That was so because the State's public 
accommodations law did “not aim at the suppression of 
speech” and did “not distinguish between prohibited and per-
mitted activity on the basis of viewpoint.” Id., at 623–624. 
If the State had applied the law “for the purpose of hamper-
ing the organization's ability to express its views,” that 
would be a different matter. Id., at 624 (emphasis added). 
“Instead,” the law's purpose was “eliminating discrimination 
and assuring [the State's] citizens equal access to publicly 
available goods and services.” Ibid. “That goal,” the 
Court reasoned, “was unrelated to the suppression of expres-
sion” and “plainly serves compelling state interests of the 
highest order.” Ibid. 
Justice O'Connor concurred in part and concurred in the 
judgment. See id., at 631. She stressed that the U. S. Jay-
cees was a predominantly commercial entity open to the pub-
lic. And she took the view that there was a First Amend-
ment “dichotomy” between rights of commercial and 
expressive association. Id., at 634. The State, for example, 
was “free to impose any rational regulation” on commercial 
transactions themselves. “A shopkeeper,” Justice O'Connor 
explained, “has no constitutional right to deal only with per-
sons of one sex.” Ibid. 
To wit, the Court had just decided in Hishon v. King & 
Spalding, 467 U. S. 69, 78 (1984), that a law partnership had 
no constitutional right to discriminate on the basis of sex in 
violation of Title VII. The law partnership was an act of 
association. Its services (legal advocacy) were expressive; 
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Sotomayor, J., dissenting 
indeed, they consisted of speech. So the law frm argued 
that requiring it to consider a woman for the partnership 
violated its First Amendment rights “of free expression” and 
“of commercial association.” Brief for Respondent, O. T. 
1983, No. 82–940, pp. 14–18. This Court rejected that argu-
ment. The application of Title VII did not “infringe consti-
tutional rights of expression or association,” the Court held, 
because compliance with Title VII did not “inhibi[t]” the 
partnership's ability to advocate for certain “ideas and be-
liefs.” 467 U. S., at 78 (internal quotation marks omitted); 
see also supra, at 620–621 (discussing Runyon, 427 U. S., at 
176). The Court reiterated: “ `[I]nvidious private discrimina-
tion . . . has never been accorded affrmative constitutional pro-
tections.' ” 467 U. S., at 78 (quoting Norwood, 413 U. S., at 
470). 
II 
Battling discrimination is like “battling the Hydra.” 
Shelby County v. Holder, 570 U. S. 529, 560 (2013) (Gins-
burg, J., dissenting). Whenever you defeat “one form of . . . 
discrimination,” another “spr[ings] up in its place.” Ibid. 
Time and again, businesses and other commercial entities 
have claimed constitutional rights to discriminate. And 
time and again, this Court has courageously stood up to 
those claims—until today. Today, the Court shrinks. A 
business claims that it would like to sell wedding websites 
to the general public, yet deny those same websites to gay 
and lesbian couples. Under state law, the business is free 
to include, or not to include, any lawful message it wants in 
its wedding websites. The only thing the business may not 
do is deny whatever websites it offers on the basis of sexual 
orientation. This Court, however, grants the business a 
broad exemption from state law and allows the business to 
post a notice that says: Wedding websites will be refused 
to gays and lesbians. The Court's decision, which confates 
denial of service and protected expression, is a grave error. 
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Sotomayor, J., dissenting 
A 
303 Creative LLC is a limited liability company that sells 
graphic and website designs for proft. Lorie Smith is the 
company's founder and sole member-owner. Smith believes 
same-sex marriages are “false,” because “ `God's true story 
of marriage' ” is a story of a “ `union between one man and 
one woman.' ” Brief for Petitioners 4, 6–7 (quoting App. to 
Pet. for Cert. 188a, 189a); Tr. of Oral Arg. 36, 40–41. Same-
sex marriage, according to her, “violates God's will” and 
“harms society and children.” App. to Pet. for Cert. 186a. 
303 Creative has never sold wedding websites. Smith 
now believes, however, that “God is calling her `to explain 
His true story about marriage.' ” Brief for Petitioners 7 
(quoting App. to Pet. for Cert. 188a). For that reason, she 
says, she wants her for-proft company to enter the wedding 
website business. There is only one thing: Smith would like 
her company to sell wedding websites “to the public,” App. 
to Pet. for Cert. 189a; Colo. Rev. Stat. § 24–34–601(1), but not 
to same-sex couples. She also wants to post a notice on the 
company's website announcing this intent to discriminate. 
App. to Pet. for Cert. 188a–189a. In Smith's view, “it would 
violate [her] sincerely held religious beliefs to create a wed-
ding website for a same-sex wedding because, by doing so, 
[she] would be expressing a message celebrating and promot-
ing a conception of marriage that [she] believe[s] is contrary 
to God's design.” Id., at 189a. 
Again, Smith's company has never sold a wedding website 
to any customer. Colorado, therefore, has never had to en-
force its antidiscrimination laws against the company. As 
the majority puts it, however, Smith “worries that, if she 
enters the wedding website business, the State will force her 
to convey messages inconsistent with her belief that mar-
riage should be reserved to unions between one man and 
one woman.” Ante, at 580. So Smith and her company, the 
petitioners here, sued the State in federal court. They 
sought a court decree giving them a special exemption from 
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Sotomayor, J., dissenting 
CADA's Accommodation Clause (which, remember, makes it 
unlawful for a business to hold itself out to the public yet 
deny to any individual, because of sexual orientation, the full 
and equal enjoyment of the business's goods or services, see 
supra, at 605–606) and CADA's Communication Clause 
(which makes it unlawful to advertise that goods or services 
will be denied because of sexual orientation, see supra, 
at 606). App. 303–304. 
The breadth of petitioners' pre-enforcement challenge is 
astounding. According to Smith, the Free Speech Clause of 
the First Amendment entitles her company to refuse to sell 
any “websites for same-sex weddings,” even though the com-
pany plans to offer wedding websites to the general public. 
Ibid.; see also Brief for Petitioners 22–23, and n. 2; Tr. of 
Oral Arg. 37–38. In other words, the company claims a 
categorical exemption from a public accommodations law 
simply because the company sells expressive services. The 
sweeping nature of this claim should have led this Court to 
reject it. 
B 
The First Amendment does not entitle petitioners to a spe-
cial exemption from a state law that simply requires them to 
serve all members of the public on equal terms. Such a law 
does not directly regulate petitioners' speech at all, and peti-
tioners may not escape the law by claiming an expressive 
interest in discrimination. The First Amendment likewise 
does not exempt petitioners from the law's prohibition on 
posting a notice that they will deny goods or services based 
on sexual orientation. 
1 
This Court has long held that “the First Amendment does 
not prevent restrictions directed at commerce or conduct 
from imposing incidental burdens on speech.” Sorrell v. 
IMS Health Inc., 564 U. S. 552, 567 (2011). “Congress, for 
example, can prohibit employers from discriminating in hir-
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626 303 CREATIVE LLC v. ELENIS 
Sotomayor, J., dissenting 
ing on the basis of race. The fact that this will require an 
employer to take down a sign reading `White Applicants 
Only' hardly means that the law should be analyzed as one 
regulating the employer's speech rather than conduct.” 
Rumsfeld v. Forum for Academic and Institutional Rights, 
Inc., 547 U. S. 47, 62 (2006) (FAIR). This principle explains 
“why an ordinance against outdoor fres might forbid burning 
a fag and why antitrust laws can prohibit agreements in re-
straint of trade.” Sorrell, 564 U. S., at 567 (citation and in-
ternal quotation marks omitted). 
Consider United States v. O'Brien, 391 U. S. 367 (1968). 
In that case, the Court upheld the application of a law 
against the destruction of draft cards to a defendant who 
had burned his draft card to protest the Vietnam War. The 
protester's conduct was indisputably expressive. Indeed, it 
was political expression, which lies at the heart of the First 
Amendment. Whitney v. California, 274 U. S. 357, 375 
(1927) (Brandeis, J., concurring). Yet the O'Brien Court fo-
cused on whether the Government's interest in regulating 
the conduct was to burden expression. Because it was not, 
the regulation was subject to lesser constitutional scrutiny. 
391 U. S., at 376–377, 381–382; Clark v. Community for Cre-
ative Non-Violence , 468 U. S. 288, 294, 299 (1984). The 
O'Brien standard is satisfed if a regulation is unrelated to 
the suppression of expression and “ `promotes a substantial 
government interest that would be achieved less effectively 
absent the regulation.' ” FAIR, 547 U. S., at 67 (quoting 
United States v. Albertini, 472 U. S. 675, 689 (1985)).
9 
FAIR confronted the interaction between this principle 
and an equal-access law. The law at issue was the Solomon 
Amendment, which prohibits an institution of higher educa-
tion in receipt of federal funding from denying a military 
recruiter “the same access to its campus and students that 
9 The majority commits a fundamental error in suggesting that a law 
does not regulate conduct if it ever applies to expressive activities. See 
ante, at 597, 599. This would come as a great surprise to the O'Brien Court. 
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Sotomayor, J., dissenting 
it provides to the nonmilitary recruiter receiving the most 
favorable access.” 547 U. S., at 55; see 10 U. S. C. § 983(b). 
A group of law schools challenged the Solomon Amendment 
based on their sincere objection to the military's “Don't Ask, 
Don't Tell” policy. For those who are too young to know, 
“Don't Ask, Don't Tell” was a homophobic policy that barred 
openly LGBT people from serving in the military. LGBT 
people could serve only if they kept their identities secret. 
The idea was that their open existence was a threat to the 
military. 
The law schools in FAIR claimed that the Solomon Amend-
ment infringed the schools' First Amendment freedom of 
speech. The schools provided recruiting assistance in the 
form of emails, notices on bulletin boards, and fyers. 547 
U. S., at 60–61. As the Court acknowledged, those services 
“clearly involve speech.” Id., at 60. And the Solomon 
Amendment required “schools offering such services to other 
recruiters” to provide them equally “on behalf of the mili-
tary,” even if the school deeply objected to creating such 
speech. Id., at 61. But that did not transform the equal 
provision of services into “compelled speech” of the kind 
barred by the First Amendment, because the school's speech 
was “only `compelled' if, and to the extent, the school pro-
vides such speech for other recruiters.” Id., at 62. Thus, 
any speech compulsion was “plainly incidental to the Solo-
mon Amendment's regulation of conduct.” Ibid. 
2 
The same principle resolves this case. The majority tries 
to sweep under the rug petitioners' challenge to CADA's 
Communication Clause, so I will start with it. Recall that 
Smith wants to post a notice on her company's homepage 
that the company will refuse to sell any website for a same-
sex couple's wedding. This Court, however, has already 
said that “a ban on race-based hiring may require employers 
to remove `White Applicants Only' signs.” Sorrell, 564 
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U. S., at 567 (quoting FAIR, 547 U. S., at 62; some internal 
quotation marks omitted); see Pittsburgh Press Co. v. Pitts-
burgh Comm'n on Human Relations, 413 U. S. 376, 389 
(1973). So petitioners concede that they are not entitled to 
an exemption from the Communication Clause unless they 
are also entitled to an exemption from the Accommodation 
Clause. Brief for Petitioners 34–35. That concession is all 
but fatal to their argument, because it shows that even “pure 
speech” may be burdened incident to a valid regulation of 
conduct.
10 
CADA's Accommodation Clause and its application here 
are valid regulations of conduct. It is well settled that a 
public accommodations law like the Accommodation Clause 
does not “target speech or discriminate on the basis of its 
content.” Hurley, 515 U. S., at 572. Rather, “the focal 
point of its prohibition” is “on the act of discriminating 
against individuals in the provision of publicly available 
goods, privileges, and services.” Ibid. (emphasis added). 
The State confrms this reading of CADA. The law applies 
only to status-based refusals to provide the full and equal 
enjoyment of whatever services petitioners choose to sell to 
the public. See Brief for Respondents 15–18. 
Crucially, the law “does not dictate the content of speech 
at all, which is only `compelled' if, and to the extent,” the 
company offers “such speech” to other customers. FAIR, 
547 U. S., at 62. Colorado does not require the company to 
“speak [the State's] preferred message.” Ante, at 597. Nor 
10 The majority appears to fnd this discussion of the Communication 
Clause upsetting. See ante, at 598, and n. 5. It is easy to understand 
why: The Court's prior First Amendment cases clearly explain that a ban 
on discrimination may require a business to take down a sign that ex-
presses the business owner's intent to discriminate. See, e. g., FAIR, 547 
U. S., at 62. This principle is deeply inconsistent with the majority's posi-
tion. Thus, a “straight couples only” notice, like the one the Court today 
allows, see App. to Pet. for Cert. 188a–189a, is itself a devastating indict-
ment of the majority's logic. 
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Sotomayor, J., dissenting 
does it prohibit the company from speaking the company's 
preferred message. The company could, for example, offer 
only wedding websites with biblical quotations describing 
marriage as between one man and one woman. Brief for 
Respondents 15. (Just as it could offer only t-shirts with 
such quotations.) The company could also refuse to include 
the words “Love is Love” if it would not provide those words 
to any customer. All the company has to do is offer its serv-
ices without regard to customers' protected characteristics. 
Id., at 15–16. Any effect on the company's speech is there-
fore “incidental” to the State's content-neutral regulation of 
conduct. FAIR, 547 U. S., at 62; see Hurley, 515 U. S., at 
572–573. 
Once these features of the law are understood, it becomes 
clear that petitioners' freedom of speech is not abridged in 
any meaningful sense, factual or legal. Petitioners remain 
free to advocate the idea that same-sex marriage betrays 
God's laws. FAIR, 547 U. S., at 60; Hishon, 467 U. S., at 78; 
Runyon, 427 U. S., at 176. Even if Smith believes God is 
calling her to do so through her for-proft company, the com-
pany need not hold out its goods or services to the public at 
large. Many flmmakers, visual artists, and writers never 
do. (That is why the law does not require Steven Spielberg 
or Banksy to make flms or art for anyone who asks. But 
cf. ante, at 589, 600–601.) Finally, and most importantly, 
even if the company offers its goods or services to the public, 
it remains free under state law to decide what messages to 
include or not to include. To repeat (because it escapes the 
majority): The company can put whatever “harmful” or “low-
value” speech it wants on its websites. It can “tell people 
what they do not want to hear.” Ante, at 602 (internal quo-
tation marks and brackets omitted). All the company may 
not do is offer wedding websites to the public yet refuse 
those same websites to gay and lesbian couples. See Ru-
nyon, 427 U. S., at 176 (distinguishing between schools' abil-
ity to express their bigoted view “that racial segregation is

630 303 CREATIVE LLC v. ELENIS 
Sotomayor, J., dissenting 
desirable” and the schools' proscribable “practice of exclud-
ing racial minorities”). 
Another example might help to illustrate the point. A 
professional photographer is generally free to choose her 
subjects. She can make a living taking photos of fowers or 
celebrities. The State does not regulate that choice. If the 
photographer opens a portrait photography business to the 
public, however, the business may not deny to any person, 
because of race, sex, national origin, or other protected char-
acteristic, the full and equal enjoyment of whatever services 
the business chooses to offer. That is so even though por-
trait photography services are customized and expressive. 
If the business offers school photos, it may not deny those 
services to multiracial children because the owner does not 
want to create any speech indicating that interracial couples 
are acceptable. If the business offers corporate headshots, 
it may not deny those services to women because the owner 
believes a woman's place is in the home. And if the business 
offers passport photos, it may not deny those services to 
Mexican Americans because the owner opposes immigration 
from Mexico. 
The same is true for sexual-orientation discrimination. If 
a photographer opens a photo booth outside of city hall and 
offers to sell newlywed photos captioned with the words 
“Just Married,” she may not refuse to sell that service to a 
newlywed gay or lesbian couple, even if she believes the cou-
ple is not, in fact, just married because in her view their 
marriage is “false.” Tr. of Oral Arg. 36, 40–41. 
3 
Because any burden on petitioners' speech is incidental to 
CADA's neutral regulation of commercial conduct, the regu-
lation is subject to the standard set forth in O'Brien. That 
standard is easily satisfed here because the law's application 
“promotes a substantial government interest that would be 
achieved less effectively absent the regulation.” FAIR, 547 
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U. S., at 67 (internal quotation marks omitted). Indeed, this 
Court has already held that the State's goal of “eliminating 
discrimination and assuring its citizens equal access to pub-
licly available goods and services” is “unrelated to the sup-
pression of expression” and “plainly serves compelling state 
interests of the highest order.” Roberts, 468 U. S., at 624. 
The Court has also held that by prohibiting only “ acts of 
invidious discrimination in the distribution of publicly avail-
able goods, services, and other advantages,” the law “re-
sponds precisely to the substantive problem which legiti-
mately concerns the State and abridges no more speech . . . 
than is necessary to accomplish that purpose.” Id., at 628– 
629 (emphasis added; internal quotation marks omitted); see 
supra, at 606–609. 
C 
The Court reaches the wrong answer in this case because 
it asks the wrong questions. The question is not whether 
the company's products include “elements of speech.” 
FAIR, 547 U. S., at 61. (They do.) The question is not even 
whether CADA would require the company to create and 
sell speech, notwithstanding the owner's sincere objection to 
doing so, if the company chooses to offer “such speech” to 
the public. Id., at 62. (It would.) These questions do not 
resolve the First Amendment inquiry any more than they 
did in FAIR. Instead, the proper focus is on the character 
of state action and its relationship to expression. Because 
Colorado seeks to apply CADA only to the refusal to provide 
same-sex couples the full and equal enjoyment of the com-
pany's publicly available services, so that the company's 
speech “is only `compelled' if, and to the extent,” the com-
pany chooses to offer “such speech” to the public, any burden 
on speech is “plainly incidental” to a content-neutral regula-
tion of conduct. Ibid. 
The majority attempts to distinguish this clear holding of 
FAIR by suggesting that the compelled speech in FAIR was 
“incidental” because it was “logistical” (e. g., “The U. S. 
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Sotomayor, J., dissenting 
Army recruiter will meet interested students in Room 123 at 
11 a.m.”). Ante, at 596 (internal quotation marks omitted). 
This attempt fails twice over. First, the law schools in 
FAIR alleged that the Solomon Amendment required them 
to create and disseminate speech propagating the military's 
message, which they deeply objected to, and to include mili-
tary speakers in on- and off-campus forums (if the schools 
provided equally favorable services to other recruiters). 
547 U. S., at 60–61; App. 27 and Brief for Respondents 5–8 
in Rumsfeld v. Forum for Academic and Institutional 
Rights, Inc., O. T. 2005, No. 04–1152. The majority simply 
skips over the Court's key reasoning for why any speech 
compulsion was nevertheless “incidental” to the Amend-
ment's regulation of conduct: It would occur only “if, and to 
the extent,” the regulated entity provided “such speech” to 
others. FAIR, 547 U. S., at 62. Likewise in O'Brien, the 
reason the burden on O'Brien's expression was incidental 
was not because his message was factual or uncontroversial. 
But cf. ante, at 596. O'Brien burned his draft card to send 
a political message, and the burden on his expression was 
substantial. Still, the burden was “incidental” because it 
was ancillary to a regulation that did not aim at expression. 
391 U. S., at 377. 
Second, the majority completely ignores the categorical 
nature of the exemption claimed by petitioners. Petitioners 
maintain, as they have throughout this litigation, that they 
will refuse to create any wedding website for a same-sex 
couple. Even an announcement of the time and place of a 
wedding (similar to the majority's example from FAIR) 
abridges petitioners' freedom of speech, they claim, because 
“the announcement of the wedding itself is a concept that 
[Smith] believes to be false.” Tr. of Oral Arg. 41. Indeed, 
petitioners here concede that if a same-sex couple came 
across an opposite-sex wedding website created by the com-
pany and requested an identical website, with only the names

Cite as: 600 U. S. 570 (2023) 633 
Sotomayor, J., dissenting 
and date of the wedding changed, petitioners would refuse. 
Id., at 37–38.11 That is status-based discrimination, plain 
and simple. 
Oblivious to this fact, the majority insists that petitioners 
discriminate based on message, not status. The company, 
says the majority, will not sell same-sex wedding websites 
to anyone. Ante, at 595. It will sell only opposite-sex wed-
ding websites; that is its service. Petitioners, however, 
“cannot defne their service as `opposite-sex wedding [web-
sites]' any more than a hotel can recast its services as 
`whites-only lodgings.' ” Telescope Media Group v. Lucero, 
936 F. 3d 740, 769 (CA8 2019) (Kelly, J., concurring in part 
and dissenting in part). To allow a business open to the 
public to defne the expressive quality of its goods or services 
to exclude a protected group would nullify public accommo-
dations laws. It would mean that a large retail store could 
sell “passport photos for white people.” 
The majority protests that Smith will gladly sell her goods 
and services to anyone, including same-sex couples. Ante, 
at 580, 595. She just will not sell websites for same-sex wed-
dings. Apparently, a gay or lesbian couple might buy a wed-
ding website for their straight friends. This logic would be 
11 Because petitioners have never sold a wedding website to anyone, the 
record contains only a mockup website. The mockup confrms what you 
would expect: The website provides details of the event, a form to RSVP, a 
gift registry, etc. See App. 51–72. The customization of these elements 
pursuant to a content-neutral regulation of conduct does not unconstitu-
tionally intrude upon any protected expression of the website designer. 
Yet Smith claims a First Amendment right to refuse to provide any wed-
ding website for a same-sex couple. Her claim therefore rests on the idea 
that her act of service is itself a form of protected expression. In grant-
ing Smith's claim, the majority collapses the distinction between status-
based and message-based refusals of service. The history shows just how 
profoundly wrong that is. See Runyon v. McCrary, 427 U. S. 160, 176 
(1976); Hishon v. King & Spalding , 467 U. S. 69, 78 (1984); Roberts v. 
United States Jaycees, 468 U. S. 609, 622–629 (1984). 
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634 303 CREATIVE LLC v. ELENIS 
Sotomayor, J., dissenting 
amusing if it were not so embarrassing.12 I suppose the 
Heart of Atlanta Motel could have argued that Black people 
may still rent rooms for their white friends. Smith answers 
that she will sell other websites for gay or lesbian clients. 
But then she, like Ollie McClung, who would serve Black 
people take-out but not table service, discriminates against 
LGBT people by offering them a limited menu.
13 This is 
plain to see, for all who do not look the other way. 
The majority, however, analogizes this case to Hurley and 
Boy Scouts of America v. Dale, 530 U. S. 640 (2000). The 
law schools in FAIR likewise relied on Hurley and Dale to 
argue that the Solomon Amendment violated their free-
speech rights. FAIR confrmed, however, that a neutral 
regulation of conduct imposes an incidental burden on speech 
when the regulation grants a right of equal access that re-
quires the regulated party to provide speech only if, and to 
the extent, it provides such speech for others. Supra, at 
626–627, 631–632. 
Hurley and Dale, by contrast, involved “peculiar” applica-
tions of public accommodations laws, not to “the act of dis-
criminating . . . in the provision of publicly available goods” 
by “clearly commercial entities,” but rather to private, non-
proft expressive associations in ways that directly burdened 
speech. Hurley, 515 U. S., at 572 (private parade); Dale, 530 
U. S., at 657 (Boy Scouts). The Court in Hurley and Dale 
stressed that the speech burdens in those cases were not 
12 The majority tacitly acknowledges the absurdity. At the start of its 
opinion, it explains that Smith “decided to expand her offerings to include 
services for couples seeking websites for their weddings.” Ante, at 579 
(emphasis added). 
13 What is “ `embarrassing' ” about this reasoning is not, as the Court 
claims, the “distinction between status and message.” Ante, at 595, n. 3. 
It is petitioners' contrivance, embraced by the Court, that a prohibition 
on status-based discrimination can be avoided by asserting that a group 
can always buy services on behalf of others, or else that the group can 
access a “separate but equal” subset of the services made available to 
everyone else. 
Page Proof Pending Publication

Cite as: 600 U. S. 570 (2023) 635 
Sotomayor, J., dissenting 
incidental to prohibitions on status-based discrimination be-
cause the associations did not assert that “mere acceptance 
of a member from a particular group would impair [the asso-
ciation's] message.” Dale, 530 U. S., at 653; see also ibid. 
(reasoning that Dale was excluded for being a gay rights 
activist, not for being gay); ibid. (explaining that in Hurley, 
“the parade organizers did not wish to exclude the GLIB 
[Irish-American gay, lesbian, and bisexual group] mem-
bers because of their sexual orientations, but because they 
wanted to march behind a GLIB banner”); Hurley, 515 U. S., 
at 572–573. 
Here, the opposite is true. 303 Creative LLC is a “clearly 
commercial entit[y].” Dale, 530 U. S., at 657. The company 
comes under the regulation of CADA only if it sells services 
to the public, and only if it denies the equal enjoyment of 
such services because of sexual orientation. The State con-
frms that the company is free to include or not to include any 
message in whatever services it chooses to offer. Supra, at 
628–630. And the company confrms that it plans to engage 
in status-based discrimination. Supra, at 624–625, 632–634. 
Therefore, any burden on the company's expression is inci-
dental to the State's content-neutral regulation of commer-
cial conduct. 
Frustrated by this inescapable logic, the majority dials up 
the rhetoric, asserting that “Colorado seeks to compel [the 
company's] speech in order to excise certain ideas or view-
points from the public dialogue.” The State's “very purpose 
in seeking to apply its law,” in the majority's view, is “the 
coercive elimination of dissenting ideas about marriage.” 
Ante, at 588 (internal quotation marks and brackets omit-
ted).
14 That is an astonishing view of the law. It is con-
trary to the fact that a law requiring public-facing businesses 
14 The majority's repeated invocation of this Orwellian thought policing is 
revealing of just how much it misunderstands this case. See ante, at 588– 
589, 596–597, 601–602 (claiming that the State seeks to “eliminate ideas” and 
that it will punish Smith unless she “conforms her views to the State's”). 
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636 303 CREATIVE LLC v. ELENIS 
Sotomayor, J., dissenting 
to accept all comers “is textbook viewpoint neutral,” Chris-
tian Legal Soc. Chapter of Univ. of Cal., Hastings College of 
Law v. Martinez, 561 U. S. 661, 695 (2010); contrary to the 
fact that the Accommodation Clause and the State's applica-
tion of it here allows Smith to include in her company's goods 
and services whatever “dissenting views about marriage” 
she wants; and contrary to this Court's clear holdings that 
the purpose of a public accommodations law, as applied to 
the commercial act of discrimination in the sale of publicly 
available goods and services, is to ensure equal access to and 
equal dignity in the public marketplace, supra, at 606–609. 
So it is dispiriting to read the majority suggest that this 
case resembles West Virginia Bd. of Ed. v. Barnette, 319 
U. S. 624 (1943). A content-neutral equal-access policy is “a 
far cry” from a mandate to “endorse” a pledge chosen by the 
Government. FAIR, 547 U. S., at 62. This Court has said 
“it trivializes the freedom protected in Barnette” to equate 
the two. Ibid. Requiring Smith's company to abide by a 
law against invidious discrimination in commercial sales to 
the public does not conscript her into espousing the govern-
ment's message. It does not “invad[e]” her “sphere of intel-
lect” or violate her constitutional “right to differ.” Ante, at 
580, 585 (internal quotation marks omitted). All it does is 
require her to stick to her bargain: “The owner who hangs a 
shingle and offers her services to the public cannot retreat 
from the promise of open service; to do so is to offer the 
public marked money. It is to convey the promise of a free 
and open society and then take the prize away from the de-
spised few.” J. Singer, We Don't Serve Your Kind Here: 
Public Accommodations and the Mark of Sodom, 95 B. U. 
L. Rev. 929, 949 (2015). 
III 
Today is a sad day in American constitutional law and in 
the lives of LGBT people. The Supreme Court of the 
United States declares that a particular kind of business, 
though open to the public, has a constitutional right to refuse 
Page Proof Pending Publication

Page Proof Pending Publication
Cite as: 600 U. S. 570 (2023) 637 
Sotomayor, J., dissenting 
to serve members of a protected class. The Court does so 
for the frst time in its history. By issuing this new license 
to discriminate in a case brought by a company that seeks to 
deny same-sex couples the full and equal enjoyment of its 
services, the immediate, symbolic effect of the decision is to 
mark gays and lesbians for second-class status. In this way, 
the decision itself inficts a kind of stigmatic harm, on top of 
any harm caused by denials of service. The opinion of the 
Court is, quite literally, a notice that reads: “Some services 
may be denied to same-sex couples.” 
“The truth is,” these “affronts and denials” “are intensely 
human and personal.” S. Rep. No. 872, at 15 (internal quo-
tation marks omitted). Sometimes they may “harm the 
physical body, but always they strike at the root of the 
human spirit, at the very core of human dignity.” Ibid. To 
see how, imagine a same-sex couple browses the public mar-
ket with their child. The market could be online or in a 
shopping mall. Some stores sell products that are custo-
mized and expressive. The family sees a notice announcing 
that services will be refused for same-sex weddings. What 
message does that send? It sends the message that we live 
in a society with social castes. It says to the child of the 
same-sex couple that their parents' relationship is not equal 
to others'. And it reminds LGBT people of a painful feeling 
that they know all too well: There are some public places 
where they can be themselves, and some where they cannot. 
K. Yoshino, Covering 61–66 (2006). Ask any LGBT person, 
and you will learn just how often they are forced to navigate 
life in this way. They must ask themselves: If I reveal my 
identity to this co-worker, or to this shopkeeper, will they 
treat me the same way? If I hold the hand of my partner 
in this setting, will someone stare at me, harass me, or even 
hurt me? It is an awful way to live. Freedom from this 
way of life is the very object of a law that declares: All mem-
bers of the public are entitled to inhabit public spaces on 
equal terms.

638 303 CREATIVE LLC v. ELENIS 
Sotomayor, J., dissenting 
This case cannot be understood outside of the context in 
which it arises. In that context, the outcome is even more 
distressing. The LGBT rights movement has made historic 
strides, and I am proud of the role this Court recently played 
in that history. Today, however, we are taking steps back-
ward. A slew of anti-LGBT laws have been passed in some 
parts of the country,
15 raising the specter of a “bare . . . de-
sire to harm a politically unpopular group.” Romer, 517 
U. S., at 634 (internal quotation marks omitted). This is es-
pecially unnerving when “for centuries there have been pow-
erful voices to condemn” this small minority. Lawrence v. 
Texas, 539 U. S. 558, 571 (2003). In this pivotal moment, 
the Court had an opportunity to reaffrm its commitment to 
equality on behalf of all members of society, including LGBT 
people. It does not do so. 
Although the consequences of today's decision might be 
most pressing for the LGBT community, the decision's logic 
cannot be limited to discrimination on the basis of sexual 
orientation or gender identity. The decision threatens to 
balkanize the market and to allow the exclusion of other 
groups from many services. A website designer could 
equally refuse to create a wedding website for an interracial 
couple, for example. How quickly we forget that opposition 
to interracial marriage was often because “ `Almighty God 
. . . did not intend for the races to mix.' ” Loving v. Vir-
ginia, 388 U. S. 1, 3 (1967). Yet the reason for discrimi-
nation need not even be religious, as this case arises under 
the Free Speech Clause. A stationer could refuse to sell a 
birth announcement for a disabled couple because she op-
poses their having a child. A large retail store could re-
15 These laws variously censor discussion of sexual orientation and gen-
der identity in schools, see, e. g., 2023 Ky. Acts pp. 775–779, and ban drag 
shows in public, see 2023 Tenn. Pub. Acts ch. 2. Yet we are told that the 
real threat to free speech is that a commercial business open to the public 
might have to serve all members of the public. 
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Cite as: 600 U. S. 570 (2023) 639 
Sotomayor, J., dissenting 
serve its family portrait services for “traditional” families. 
And so on.16 
Wedding websites, birth announcements, family portraits, 
epitaphs. These are not just words and images. They are 
the most profound moments in a human's life. They are the 
moments that give that life personal and cultural meaning. 
You already heard the story of Bob and Jack, the elderly gay 
couple forced to fnd a funeral home more than an hour away. 
Supra, at 607–608, and n. 4. Now hear the story of Cynthia 
and Sherry, a lesbian couple of 13 years until Cynthia died 
from cancer at age 35. When Cynthia was diagnosed, she 
drew up a will, which authorized Sherry to make burial ar-
rangements. Cynthia had asked Sherry to include an in-
scription on her headstone, listing the relationships that 
were important to her, for example, “daughter, granddaugh-
ter, sister, and aunt.” After Cynthia died, the cemetery was 
willing to include those words, but not the words that de-
scribed Cynthia's relationship to Sherry: “ `beloved life part-
ner.' ” N. Knauer, Gay and Lesbian Elders 102 (2011). 
There are many such stories, too many to tell here. And 
after today, too many to come. 
I fear that the symbolic damage of the Court's opinion is 
done. But that does not mean that we are powerless in the 
face of the decision. The meaning of our Constitution is 
found not in any law volume, but in the spirit of the people 
who live under it. Every business owner in America has a 
choice whether to live out the values in the Constitution. 
16 The potential implications of the Court's logic are deeply troubling. 
Would Runyon v. McCrary have come out differently if the schools had 
argued that accepting Black children would have required them to create 
original speech, like lessons, report cards, or diplomas, that they deeply 
objected to? What if the law frm in Hishon v. King & Spalding had 
argued that promoting a woman to the partnership would have required 
it to alter its speech, like letterhead or court flings, in ways that it would 
rather not? Once you look closely, “compelled speech” (in the majority's 
facile understanding of that concept) is everywhere. 
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640 303 CREATIVE LLC v. ELENIS 
Sotomayor, J., dissenting 
Make no mistake: Invidious discrimination is not one of them. 
“[D]iscrimination in any form and in any degree has no justi-
fable part whatever in our democratic way of life.” Kore-
matsu v. United States, 323 U. S. 214, 242 (1944) (Murphy, J., 
dissenting). “It is unattractive in any setting but it is ut-
terly revolting among a free people who have embraced 
the principles set forth in the Constitution of the United 
States.” Ibid. 
The unattractive lesson of the majority opinion is this: 
What's mine is mine, and what's yours is yours. The lesson 
of the history of public accommodations laws is altogether 
different. It is that in a free and democratic society, there 
can be no social castes. And for that to be true, it must be 
true in the public market. For the “promise of freedom” is 
an empty one if the Government is “powerless to assure that 
a dollar in the hands of [one person] will purchase the same 
thing as a dollar in the hands of a[nother].” Jones v. Alfred 
H. Mayer Co., 392 U. S. 409, 443 (1968). Because the Court 
today retreats from that promise, I dissent. 
Page Proof Pending Publication

Page Proof Pending Publication
Reporter’s Note 
The attached opinion has been revised to refect the usual publication 
and citation style of the United States Reports. The revised pagination 
makes available the offcial United States Reports citation in advance of 
publication. The syllabus has been prepared by the Reporter of Decisions 
for the convenience of the reader and constitutes no part of the opinion of 
the Court. A list of counsel who argued or fled briefs in this case, and 
who were members of the bar of this Court at the time this case was 
argued, has been inserted following the syllabus. Other revisions may 
include adjustments to formatting, captions, citation form, and any errant 
punctuation. The following additional edits were made: 
None

Retrieval chunks

• #1

  PRELIMINARY PRINT Volume 600 U. S. Part 1 Pages 570–640 OFFICIAL REPORTS OF THE SUPREME COURT June 30, 2023 REBECCA A. WOMELDORF reporter of decisions Page Proof Pending Publication NOTICE: This preliminary print is subject to formal revision before the bound volume is published. Users are requested to noti…

• #2

  business conveys “through the websites” it creates; the wedding web- sites she plans to create “will be expressive in nature,” will be “custo- mized and tailored” through close collaboration with individual couples, and will “express Ms. Smith's and 303 Creative's message celebrating and promoting” her view of mar…

• #3

  ans organizing a parade in Boston to include a group of gay, lesbian, and bisexual individuals because the parade was protected speech, and requiring the veterans to include voices they wished to exclude would impermissibly require them to “alter the expressive content of their parade.” Id., at 572–573. And in Boy…

• #4

  Ms. Smith seeks to engage in protected First Amendment speech; Colorado seeks to compel speech she does not wish to provide. As the Tenth Circuit observed, if Ms. Smith offers wedding websites celebrat- ing marriages she endorses, the State intends to compel her to create custom websites celebrating other marriage…

• #5

  in places of public accommodation. Roberts v. United States Jaycees, 468 U. S. 609, 628. This Court has recognized that public accommoda- tions laws “vindicate the deprivation of personal dignity that surely ac- companies denials of equal access to public establishments.” Heart of Atlanta Motel, Inc. v. United Sta…

• #6

  because she plans to offer “unique services” that are, “by defnition, unavailable elsewhere.” 6 F. 4th, at 1179–1180 (internal quotation marks omitted). In some sense, of course, her voice is unique; so is everyone's. But that hardly means a State may coopt an individual's voice for its own purposes. The speaker i…

• #7

  compel, and it claims that the reason is that she objects to the “protected characteristics” of certain customers. But the parties' stipulations state, to the contrary, that Ms. Smith will gladly conduct business with those having protected characteristics so long as the custom graphics Cite as: 600 U. S. 570 (202…

• #8

  With him on the brief were Solicitor General Prelogar , As- sistant Attorney General Clarke , Principal Deputy Assist- Page Proof Pending Publication Page Proof Pending Publication 576 303 CREATIVE LLC v. ELENIS Counsel ant Attorney General Boynton, Colleen E. Roh Sinzdak, Elizabeth Parr Hecker, Teresa Kwong , …

• #9

  Smith, and Kathryn E. Tarbert; for the Ethics and Public Policy Center et al. by Thomas Brejcha, Jeffrey M. Trissell, Charles S. LiMandri, and Paul M. Jonna; for First Amendment Scholars by Kenneth C. Daines; for the Freedom and Justice Foundation by David C. McGrail; for the Insti- tute for Faith and Family by De…

• #10

  Adam M. Cambier , Assistant Attorneys General, and by the Attorneys General of their respective jurisdictions as follows: Rob Bonta of Califor- nia, William Tong of Connecticut, Kathleen Jennings of Delaware, Karl A. Racine of the District of Columbia, Holly T. Shikada of Hawaii, Kwame Raoul of Illinois, Aaron M. …

• #11

  Caso, Kristin M. Bronson, Robert E. Hornik, Jr., Barry N. Handwerger , Michael N. Feuer , Sylvia O. Hinds-Radix, Leslie J. Girard, Lyndsey M. Olson, Mark Barber , and James R. Williams; for the Modern Military Association of America et al. by Michael E. Bern and Peter Perkowski; for the NAACP Legal Defense & Educa…

• #12

  about their upcoming wedding. All of the text and graphics on these websites will be “original,” “customized,” and “tai- lored” creations. Id., at 187a. The websites will be “ex- pressive in nature,” designed “to communicate a particular message.” Id., at 181a. Viewers will know, too, “that the websites are [Ms. …

• #13

  asserts, the First Amendment's Free Speech Clause protects her from being compelled to speak what she does not believe. The Constitution, she insists, protects her right to differ. B To clarify her rights, Ms. Smith fled a lawsuit in federal district court. In that suit, she sought an injunction to pre- vent the…

• #14

  [ing] . . . any written . . . communication” indicating that a person will be denied “the full and equal enjoyment” of services or that he will be “unwelcome, objectionable, unacceptable, or undesirable” based on a pro- tected classifcation. Colo. Rev. Stat. § 24–34–601(2)(a) (2022). The Com- munication Clause, Ms…

• #15

  Cite as: 600 U. S. 570 (2023) 583 Opinion of the Court • To the extent Ms. Smith may not be able to provide certain services to a potential customer, “[t]here are numerous companies in the State of Colorado and across the nation that offer custom website design services.” Id., at 190a. C Ultimately, the distri…

• #16

  suring access to a particular person's” voice, expression, or artistic talent has never qualifed as “a compelling state in- terest” under this Court's precedents. Id., at 1203. Nor, he submitted, should courts depart from those precedents now. “Taken to its logical end,” Chief Judge Tymkovich warned, his colleagu…

• #17

  rived here, this Court offered a frm response. In seeking to compel students to salute the fag and recite a pledge, the Court held, state authorities had “transcend[ed] consti- tutional limitations on their powers.” 319 U. S., at 642. Their dictates “invade[d] the sphere of intellect and spirit which it is the pu…

• #18

  tioned or deeply “misguided,” Hurley, 515 U. S., at 574, and likely to cause “anguish” or “incalculable grief,” Snyder v. Phelps, 562 U. S. 443, 456 (2011). Equally, the First Amend- ment protects acts of expressive association. See, e. g., Dale, 530 U. S., at 647–656; Hurley, 515 U. S., at 568–570, 579. Generall…

• #19

  flms, paintings, drawings, and engravings,” to “oral utter- ance and the printed word”—qualify for the First Amend- ment's protections; no less can hold true when it comes to speech like Ms. Smith's conveyed over the Internet. Kaplan v. California, 413 U. S. 115, 119–120 (1973); see also Shurtleff v. Boston, 596 …

• #20

  the legal conclusions that follow. While that court thought Colorado could compel speech from Ms. Smith consistent with the Constitution, our First Amendment precedents laid out above teach otherwise. In Hurley, the Court found that Massachusetts impermissibly compelled speech in violation Page Proof Pending Publ…

• #21

  Page Proof Pending Publication 590 303 CREATIVE LLC v. ELENIS Opinion of the Court to design websites for an organization that advocates against same-sex marriage. See Brief for Petitioners 26–27. Countless other creative professionals, too, could be forced to choose between remaining silent, producing speech th…

• #22

  nally bound by the State's public accommodations law) with Colo. Rev. Stat. § 24–34–601(1) (currently defning a public accommodation to include “any place of business engaged in any sales to the public”). Importantly, States have also expanded their laws to pro- hibit more forms of discrimination. Today, for exam…

• #23

  public accommodations law is immune from the demands of the Constitution. In particular, this Court has held, public accommodations statutes can sweep too broadly when de- ployed to compel speech. In Hurley, the Court commented favorably on Massachusetts's public accommodations law, but made plain it could not be…

• #24

  States as Amicus Curiae 19 (conceding that “constitutional concerns” would arise if Colorado “require[d] petitione[r] to design a website” that she “would not create or convey for any client”). Instead, Colorado devotes most of its efforts to advancing an alternative theory for affrmance. The State's alternative …

• #25

  a difference. Does anyone think a speechwriter loses his First Amendment right to choose for whom he works if he accepts money in return? Or that a visual artist who ac- cepts commissions from the public does the same? Many of the world's great works of literature and art were created with an expectation of compe…

• #26

  v. Skokie, 432 U. S. 43, 43–44 (1977) (per curiam ) (upholding free-speech rights of participants in a Nazi parade); Snyder, 562 U. S., at 456–457 (same for protestors of a soldier's funeral). 3 3 The dissent labels the distinction between status and message “amus- ing” and “embarrassing.” Post, at 634. But in d…

• #27

  It is a far cry from this case too. To be sure, our cases have held that the government may sometimes “requir[e] the dissemination of purely factual and uncontroversial informa- tion,” particularly in the context of “commercial advertis- ing.” Hurley, 515 U. S., at 573 (internal quotation marks omitted); see also…

• #28

  speech here is “incidental.” Post, at 625, 627–632, 634–635. All despite the Tenth Circuit's fnding that Colorado intends to force Ms. Smith to convey a message she does not believe with the “very purpose” of “[e]liminating . . . ideas” that dif- fer from its own. 6 F. 4th, at 1178. 4 Nor does the dissent's reim…

• #29

  stipulations—and the fact Colorado seeks to use its Accommodation Clause to compel speech in order to ensure conformity to its own views on a topic of major signifcance—the First Amendment implications become obvious. As does the fact that our case is nothing like a typical application of a public accommodations l…

• #30

  ment liberties. Post, at 627–636. Far from embracing a no- tion like that, our cases have rejected it time after time— including in the context of public accommodations laws. See Parts II–IV , supra; FAIR, 547 U. S., at 61–64 (no govern- ment may affect a “speaker's own message” by “forc[ing]” her to “accommodate…

• #31

  exclude women from partnership. Post, at 621–623 (citing Hishon v. King & Spalding, 467 U. S. 69 (1984); Roberts v. United States Jaycees, 468 U. S. 609 (1984)). But the dissent disregards Dale's holding that context matters and that very different considerations come into play when a law is used to force individu…

• #32

  the public.” Colo. Rev. Stat. § 24–34–601(1) (emphasis added); see also Part III, supra. And the dissent can hardly dispute that many artists and writers accept commissions from the public. Brief for Creative Pro- fessionals et al. as Amici Curiae 5–21. Certainly, Colorado does not ad- vance anything like the diss…

• #33

  In this case, Colorado seeks to force an individual to speak in ways that align with its views but defy her conscience Page Proof Pending Publication Cite as: 600 U. S. 570 (2023) 603 Sotomayor, J., dissenting about a matter of major signifcance. In the past, other States in Barnette, Hurley, and Dale have simil…

• #34

  also holds that the company has a right to post a notice that says, “ `no [wedding websites] will be sold if they will be used for gay marriages.' ” Ibid. “What a difference fve years makes.” Carson v. Makin, 596 U. S. –––, ––– (2022) (Sotomayor , J., dissenting). And not just at the Court. Around the country, th…

• #35

  such as age, sex, sexual orientation, and gender identity. 2 And numerous local laws offer similar protections. The people of Colorado have adopted the Colorado Anti- Discrimination Act (CADA), which provides: 1 See 42 U. S. C. § 2000a et seq. (Title II of Civil Rights Act of 1964); 42 U. S. C. § 12181 et seq. (…

• #36

  race, creed, color, sex, sexual orientation, gender iden- tity, gender expression, marital status, national origin, or ancestry, the full and equal enjoyment of the goods, services, facilities, privileges, advantages, or accommo- dations of a place of public accommodation.” Colo. Rev. Stat. § 24–34–601(2)(a). Th…

• #37

  able. “ `Discrimination is not simply dollars and cents, ham- burgers and movies; it is the humiliation, frustration, and embarrassment that a person must surely feel when he is told that he is unacceptable as a member of the public be- cause of his [social identity]. It is equally the inability to explain to a c…

• #38

  Board of Directors of Rotary Int'l v. Rotary Club of Duarte , 481 U. S. 537, 549 (1987). Moreover, a law that prohibits only such acts by businesses open to the public is narrowly tailored to achieve that compelling interest. The law “re- sponds precisely to the substantive problem which legiti- mately concerns t…

• #39

  simple, but powerful, social contract: A business that chooses to sell to the public assumes a duty to serve the public without unjust discrimination. J. Singer, No Right To Ex- clude: Public Accommodations and Private Property, 90 Nw. U. L. Rev. 1283, 1298 (1996) (Singer). B The legal duty of a business open to…

• #40

  Law 464–465 (1827); J. Story, Commentaries on the Law of Bailments §§ 495, 591 (1832); see also, e. g., Markham v. Brown, 8 N. H. 523, 528 (1837); Jencks v. Coleman, 13 F. Cas. 442, 443 (No. 7,258) (CC RI 1835) (Story, J.); Dwight v. Brew- ster, 18 Mass. 50, 53 (1822). The majority is therefore mistaken to sugges…

• #41

  See Lane v. Cotton, 12 Mod. 472, 484, 88 Eng. Rep. 1458, 1464 (K. B. 1701) (Holt, C. J.). That duty instead came from somewhere else, and the weight of authority indicates that it came from a business's act of holding itself out to the public as ready to serve anyone who would hire it. Singer 1304–1330; 3 W. Black…

• #42

  “set apart for white ladies and their gentlemen” on account of tobacco smoke in her car, and was forcibly removed), with Memphis & C. R. Co. v. Benson, 85 Tenn. 627, 632, 4 S. W. 5, 7 (1887) (accepting that a white man would be permitted to ride standing in the ladies' car on account of tobacco smoke in his car). …

• #43

  cial gain by offering goods or services to the public must stick to his bargain.” S. Rep. No. 872, at 22; see also id., at 9–10 (endorsing Lord Holt's view in Lane v. Cotton). Page Proof Pending Publication 614 303 CREATIVE LLC v. ELENIS Sotomayor, J., dissenting This bargain, America would soon realize, had lon…

• #44

  Not only have public accommodations laws expanded to recognize more forms of unjust discrimination, such as dis- crimination based on race, sex, and disability, such laws have also expanded to include more goods and services as “public accommodations.” What began with common inns, carriers, and smiths has grown t…

• #45

  who would subordinate LGBT people have often done so with the backing of law. For most of American history, there were laws criminalizing same-sex intimacy. Oberge- fell v. Hodges, 576 U. S. 644, 660–661 (2015). “Gays and les- bians were [also] prohibited from most government em- ployment, barred from military se…

• #46

  curred in the fnal days of June in 1969 at the Stonewall Inn in Greenwich Village. Id., at 169. The Stonewall Inn was a gay bar with a “varied and lively clientele.” Id., at 171. Its “ `unruly' element” made it “an especially inviting target” for police raids. J. D'Emilio, Sexual Politics, Sexual Com- munities 23…

• #47

  About half of the States now provide such protections. 8 It is “ `unexceptional' ” that they may do so. Ante, at 591 (quoting Masterpiece Cakeshop, 584 U. S., at –––). “These are protections taken for granted by most people either be- cause they already have them or do not need them; these are protections agains…

• #48

  110 Cong. Rec. 7778 (1964) (remarks of Sen. Tower). Con- gress rejected those arguments. Title II of the Act, in particular, did not invade “rights of privacy [or] of free as- sociation,” Congress concluded, because the establishments covered by the law were “those regularly held open to the public in general.” H…

• #49

  could not be applied to his business, he argued, because that would “ `controven[e] the will of God.' ” 390 U. S., at 402– 403, n. 5. The Court found this argument “patently frivo- lous.” Ibid. Last but not least is Runyon v. McCrary, 427 U. S. 160 (1976), a case the majority studiously avoids. In Runyon, the Co…

• #50

  argued. Brief for Appellee, O. T. 1983, No. 83–724, p. 19 Page Proof Pending Publication 622 303 CREATIVE LLC v. ELENIS Sotomayor, J., dissenting (emphasis added). Thus, “the right of the Jaycees to decide its own membership” was “inseparable,” in its view, “from its ability to freely express itself.” Ibid. Thi…

• #51

  1983, No. 82–940, pp. 14–18. This Court rejected that argu- ment. The application of Title VII did not “infringe consti- tutional rights of expression or association,” the Court held, because compliance with Title VII did not “inhibi[t]” the partnership's ability to advocate for certain “ideas and be- liefs.” 467…

• #52

  now believes, however, that “God is calling her `to explain His true story about marriage.' ” Brief for Petitioners 7 (quoting App. to Pet. for Cert. 188a). For that reason, she says, she wants her for-proft company to enter the wedding website business. There is only one thing: Smith would like her company to se…

• #53

  simply because the company sells expressive services. The sweeping nature of this claim should have led this Court to reject it. B The First Amendment does not entitle petitioners to a spe- cial exemption from a state law that simply requires them to serve all members of the public on equal terms. Such a law do…

• #54

  government interest that would be achieved less effectively absent the regulation.' ” FAIR, 547 U. S., at 67 (quoting United States v. Albertini, 472 U. S. 675, 689 (1985)). 9 FAIR confronted the interaction between this principle and an equal-access law. The law at issue was the Solomon Amendment, which prohibi…

• #55

  Smith wants to post a notice on her company's homepage that the company will refuse to sell any website for a same- sex couple's wedding. This Court, however, has already said that “a ban on race-based hiring may require employers to remove `White Applicants Only' signs.” Sorrell, 564 Page Proof Pending Publicati…

• #56

  allows, see App. to Pet. for Cert. 188a–189a, is itself a devastating indict- ment of the majority's logic. Page Proof Pending Publication Page Proof Pending Publication Cite as: 600 U. S. 570 (2023) 629 Sotomayor, J., dissenting does it prohibit the company from speaking the company's preferred message. The co…

• #57

  ing racial minorities”). Another example might help to illustrate the point. A professional photographer is generally free to choose her subjects. She can make a living taking photos of fowers or celebrities. The State does not regulate that choice. If the photographer opens a portrait photography business to the…

• #58

  able goods, services, and other advantages,” the law “re- sponds precisely to the substantive problem which legiti- mately concerns the State and abridges no more speech . . . than is necessary to accomplish that purpose.” Id., at 628– 629 (emphasis added; internal quotation marks omitted); see supra, at 606–609.…

• #59

  the extent,” the regulated entity provided “such speech” to others. FAIR, 547 U. S., at 62. Likewise in O'Brien, the reason the burden on O'Brien's expression was incidental was not because his message was factual or uncontroversial. But cf. ante, at 596. O'Brien burned his draft card to send a political message,…

• #60

  ding website for their straight friends. This logic would be 11 Because petitioners have never sold a wedding website to anyone, the record contains only a mockup website. The mockup confrms what you would expect: The website provides details of the event, a form to RSVP, a gift registry, etc. See App. 51–72. The …

• #61

  speech. Hurley, 515 U. S., at 572 (private parade); Dale, 530 U. S., at 657 (Boy Scouts). The Court in Hurley and Dale stressed that the speech burdens in those cases were not 12 The majority tacitly acknowledges the absurdity. At the start of its opinion, it explains that Smith “decided to expand her offerings to…

• #62

  points from the public dialogue.” The State's “very purpose in seeking to apply its law,” in the majority's view, is “the coercive elimination of dissenting ideas about marriage.” Ante, at 588 (internal quotation marks and brackets omit- ted). 14 That is an astonishing view of the law. It is con- trary to the fa…

• #63

  spised few.” J. Singer, We Don't Serve Your Kind Here: Public Accommodations and the Mark of Sodom, 95 B. U. L. Rev. 929, 949 (2015). III Today is a sad day in American constitutional law and in the lives of LGBT people. The Supreme Court of the United States declares that a particular kind of business, though …

• #64

  way of life is the very object of a law that declares: All mem- bers of the public are entitled to inhabit public spaces on equal terms. 638 303 CREATIVE LLC v. ELENIS Sotomayor, J., dissenting This case cannot be understood outside of the context in which it arises. In that context, the outcome is even more di…

• #65

  Wedding websites, birth announcements, family portraits, epitaphs. These are not just words and images. They are the most profound moments in a human's life. They are the moments that give that life personal and cultural meaning. You already heard the story of Bob and Jack, the elderly gay couple forced to fnd a …

• #66

  terly revolting among a free people who have embraced the principles set forth in the Constitution of the United States.” Ibid. The unattractive lesson of the majority opinion is this: What's mine is mine, and what's yours is yours. The lesson of the history of public accommodations laws is altogether different.…