Supreme Court Rules Business Owner Can Deny Services to Same-Sex Couples On 30 June, the Supreme Court of the United States ruled in favour of a Coloradobased web designer who objected to creating websites for same-sex weddings, saying that the state's anti-discrimination law violated the first amendment by infringing her right to free speech as an artist. to same-sex couples, it allowed her to express her views against same-sex marriage. The state also pointed out that the case was hypothetical, and that it appeared no same-sex couples had actually asked Smith to create a website for them. The ruling came days after news outlets discovered that part of the case’s foundation appeared to be false. In her lawsuit, Smith cited a request from a gay man for help in designing a website for his wedding to a man named Mike. However, the man whose name, telephone number and email address matched those listed on the request told news outlets that he had never contacted Smith, and that he had been married to a woman for 15 years. In her dissent, Justice Sonia Sotomayor described the Supreme Court’s decision as “profoundly wrong”. “Today, the Court, for the first time in its history, grants a business open to the public a constitutional right to refuse to serve members of a protected class,” Sotomayor wrote. “Our Constitution contains no right to refuse service to a disfavoured group.” The 6-3 ruling in favour of Lorie Smith is likely to have a wide impact, making it easier for business owners to discriminate against LGBTQ customers or other groups where they are assumed to have the same entitlement to expressive speech as Smith has as a designer. Colorado argued that its anti-discrimination law did not infringe upon Smith’s first amendment rights because, while it prevented her from refusing service Monthly Round-Up AUGUST 2023 Court Rules Against Uber in Win for California Workers The highest court in California has ruled that Uber must face a class-action lawsuit claiming that it should have covered work-related expenses for UberEats drivers. The landmark ruling, delivered unanimously by the California Supreme Court, found that driver Erik Adolph did not give up his right under state law to sue on behalf of a large group of workers, despite signing an agreement to bring his own work-related legal claims in private arbitration rather than litigation. Adolph had sued Uber in 2019 over its alleged misclassification of drivers as independent contractors rather than employees. In this case, he has claimed that drivers should be reimbursed. The ruling affects more than half of non-union private sector workers in the US, who are required to sign agreements similar to Adolph’s, and could open companies in the state up to more largescale lawsuits. However, Uber lawyer Theane Evangelis argued in a statement on 17 July that the ruling conflicts with a decision made by the US Supreme Court in 2022 involving Viking River Cruises, which found that companies could force individual PAGA claims into arbitration. “We are considering our appellate options,” she said. 6 LAWYER MONTHLY AUGUST 2023
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