First, the Equality Act is not yet law, so its standards do not apply, though many of us believe that it should be passed to codify protections that currently exist due to Supreme Court precedent. The need became evident from the Court’s overturning of Roe v. Wade last year. At the moment it has an extreme rightward tilt which puts many precedents at risk. Many believe that the only way to make sure that progress is not undone is through federal legislation like the Equality Act.
The Equality Act primarily protects religious minorities and LGBTQ people from discrimination in housing, employment, public accommodation, credit and the like. It also expands protections for women and people of color not completely addressed under the Civil Rights Act of 1964. The anti-religious discrimination law portion was primarily designed to protect Muslims and other religious minorities from discrimination based upon their faith. Because it is written in an egalitarian manner, it also protects Christians, preserving certain religious exemptions existing under current law. They are allowed to give preference to people of their own faith for certain things, but they cannot weaponize their faith to deny service to other people based upon their status as a member of a protected class. There are limits.
As with any new legislation, the law’s precise meaning and application will be repeatedly tested in court in an attempt to clarify it. There is an obvious tension between certain religious beliefs and the rights of protected minorities. In particular evangelical Christians are very hostile to LGBTQ people and Muslims. What they can or cannot do in excluding services to such people will be tried on a case by case basis until it becomes clear. But this is premature since it is not law yet.
Your “analysis“ is a gobbledygook mishmash, which shows your total ignorance of the law and constitutional standards. In the 303 case, the obvious purpose was to carve out an exemption allowing a fundamentalist religious type to discriminate against LGBTQ people based upon their status of being so under the guise of protecting religious liberty. The Supreme Court never should’ve taken the case since there was no case and controversy. Article 3 of the Constitution only gives the Supreme Court jurisdiction where there is an existing case and controversy. The plaintiff in the case never received an order from an LGBTQ couple to design a website, and indeed had never actually designed a wedding website for anyone. The Court should never have taken the case.
Beyond this, it is clear because the Court took a case it should never have considered, that there was an agenda behind it doing so. The agenda was to carve out further exceptions for “Christians“ to expand the areas in which they could legally discriminate. Intent is always an issue in cases such as this. Your incredibly muddied logic in saying that refusing to carry out a service is not discrimination as long as it was not due to a client being LGBTQ begs the issue. This particular plaintiff clearly would not provide service of any kind to an LGBTQ couple. That is the reason for anti-discrimination laws protecting certain classes of people. Discerning the underlying intent is crucial to the issue. And in the case of discrimination, the burden is on the party claiming an exemption from the law, not the party claiming discrimination. This is a burden the plaintiff could never have overcome. There would’ve been a presumption of discrimination. Indeed this is the way the Colorado anti-discrimination law was written. Under that law, the plaintiff was clearly discriminating. Essentially, the plaintiff was trying to overturn the applicability of state law to their business based upon the concept of religious liberty under the Constitution superseding state law. They were successful in doing so, which is worrisome.
You suggest a hypothetical situation that the designer could have turned down an order from anyone regardless of whether they were LGBTQ or not. You are correct if they did so for reasons other than discrimination against a protected class and would have done so to anyone regardless of status. This is what you did not understand in your previous illustration using the penis cake as a comparison. The problem there was in the inappropriateness of the product ordered, not the status of the people ordering it. The order would have likely been refused from a straight couple as well. Thus they were accommodated with a different product. That is a good example of what you appear to be trying to say. In all of these cases, the issue is whether a service is being denied because of someone’s status as a member of a protected class as opposed to a legitimate business reason or for reasons that may be arbitrary but have nothing to do with their protected class status. That clearly was not the situation in the 303 case.
One can always turn down a customer just because you do not like them if no other issues are involved. If someone is loud or obnoxious or holds political beliefs with which you disagree, you can refuse to serve them as long as they are not a member of a protected class. Being a MAGAT is not a protected class. I can refuse to do business with them strictly because they are MAGATs. On the other hand if my true motivation in refusing service is because I think all MAGATs are fundamentalist Christians and I want nothing to do with Christians, now I am refusing service based upon protected status, which is addressed in the Equality Act and is potentially impermissible. (I say potentially because the fundamentalist Christians may have beliefs that are contrary to my own religious beliefs. In such a case, whose rights take precedence? To my knowledge, this has never been fully litigated in an appellate court. These cases can be complicated contrary to your simplistic analysis. This was an implied part of my original argument in my reply to your comment.)
As I said earlier, intent is always an issue in these kinds of cases. But realistically, it is not much of an issue with the MAGA crowd. The general public’s distaste with their actions and beliefs is due to their hateful rhetoric and bigotry, which has nothing to do with religion per se. Meeting the burden of proving that denial of service is due to a factor other than religion would be fairly easy to prove in my opinion.
Bottom line, your strenuous objection did not address any of the issues I raised, or for that matter, the intent and the scope of the proposed Equality Act. You continue to demonstrate your utter ignorance of the law and the appropriate standards. The person who obviously has no legal background is you. If you want to learn, take a good course in constitutional law and educate yourself. You have lots of opinions, but little knowledge. Your opinions are not only wrong, they are potentially confusing and dangerous. Enough already.
