The Fake Wedding Website Request That Undermined LGBTQ Rights in the U.S. ⇥ newrepublic.com

Melissa Gira Grant, the New Republic:

It didn’t make sense to him, [Stewart] told me later via text message. Why would a web designer — as the website the inquiry referenced as his own made clear that he was — living in San Francisco, seek to hire someone in another state who has never built a wedding website, let alone a website for a same-sex wedding, to build his wedding website?

[…]

Maybe it should not be a surprise, though, that this strange fake “request” popped up in a case in which the plaintiff’s main argument rested on the claim that someday, out there, a same-sex couple would want her to design a wedding website. The closest thing Smith had to an actual inquiry — the nonwedding of Stewart and Mike — arrived within 24 hours of her having filed a suit in which said inquiry would be potentially a helpful piece of supporting evidence. […]

This was published yesterday. Today, the Supreme Court of the United States handed down its ruling: workers who create new products which can be classified as speech are allowed to discriminate so long as the provider sincerely holds those beliefs.

Update: A followup story from Gira Grant; a discussion of the case.