In the case of the photographer (what prompted the AZ law, per the words of the crafters)
Elane Photography v. Vanessa Willock <-- Good reading.
The Supreme Court of New Mexico. Unanimous ruling.
<snip>
The United States Supreme Court has never found a compelled-speech violation arising from the application of antidiscrimination laws to a for-profit public accommodation.
In fact, it has suggested that public accommodation laws are generally constitutional.
See
Hurley
, 515 U.S. at 572 (
“Provisions like these are well within the State’s usual power to enact when a legislature has reason to believe that a given group is the target of discrimination, and they do not, as a general matter, violate the First or Fourteenth Amendments . . . . [T]he focal point of [such statutes is] rather on the act of discriminating against individuals in the provision of publicly available goods, privileges, and services on
the proscribed grounds.”).
The United States Supreme Court has found constitutional problems with some applications of state public accommodation laws, but those problems have arisen when states have applied their public accommodation laws to free-speech events such as privately organized parades, id.at 566, 573, 580-81, and private membership organizations, Boy Scouts of Am. v. Dale, 530 U.S. 640, 659, 659 n.4 (2000).2
Elane Photography, however, is an ordinary public accommodation, a “clearly commercial entit[y],” that sells goods and services to the public.
and
Antidiscrimination laws have been consistently upheld as constitutional.
See, e.g.
,
Hurley
, 515 U.S. at 572 (“[
Public accommodations la
ws] do not, as a general matter, violate
the First or Fourteenth Amendments.”);
Heart of Atlanta Motel
, 379 U.S. at 242-44, 258, 261
(sustaining Title II of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 against challenges based on the Commerce Clause and the Fifth and Thirteenth Amendments).
Elane Photography’s desire to work with heterosexual rather than homosexual couples does not give it license to violate
the NMHRA.
Elane Photography v. Vanessa Willock
Which leads me to wonder, are you a conservative in favor of State's Rights?
