A prominent legal expert said that Friday’s Supreme Court’s ruling that an artist can refuse to make wedding websites for gay couples citing their religious beliefs isn’t just a setback for the LGBTQ+ community, but it could in fact reach much further than that.
Former U.S. Attorney and Deputy Assistant Attorney General Harry Litman said that the ruling has created an opening for future discriminatory practices that are reminiscent of a past that still haunts the nation.
“Return to the ‘whites-only’ luncheonettes of the 1960s South & posit that the owners attest that they have sincere religious beliefs, reinforced by their pastor every Sunday, that blacks are inferior and that serving them would force them to endorse a message they disagree with..” Litman tweeted Friday in response to the ruling.
Litman later qualified his statement in response to a Twitter user who wrote “That’s where we are headed.”
“To be clear, I'm not saying that's where we are headed, although to paraphrase Justice Jackson, the opinion is out there like a loaded gun for someone who wants to go that way, point for today is just that the opinion doesn't have a limiting principle that forecloses that result," he added.
