AmberLaneRoberts/iStock/Getty Images Plus The Arizona Supreme Court granted businesses a right to discriminate against same-sex couples on Monday. By a 4–3 vote, the court carved an exemption into Phoenix’s human rights ordinance to let businesses refuse to sell custom wedding invitations to gay customers. The decision is rooted in the Arizona Constitution and is thus effectively insulated from review by the U.S. Supreme Court. It also contains no clear principle limiting its reach to same-sex couples or to custom invitations—potentially giving Arizona wedding vendors a broad right to discriminate in the name of free speech. Monday’s ruling Brush & Nib v. Phoenix revolves around a Phoenix ordinance that bars public accommodations from discriminating on the basis of sexual orientation. (There is no analogous state law.) In 2016, the anti-LGBTQ law firm Alliance Defending Freedom filed a lawsuit against the ordinance on behalf of Brush & Nib Studio, a for-profit business that makes custom wedding invitations. No same-sex couple had requested Brush & Nib’s services. But the company’s owners, who are anti-gay Christians, were alarmed by the possibility that they might be compelled to serve a same-sex couple. So ADF asked a court to bar Phoenix from enforcing the law […]
