Federal Way resident Bob Roegner is a former mayor of Auburn. Contact bjroegner@comcast.net. Here’s a tale of two United States Supreme Court decisions — one right and one wrong. Despite two clear examples of discrimination, the court ruled differently in each case. The court was correct when it declined for a second time to hear the case of the Richland florist who refused to create wedding bouquets for a gay couple based on the owner’s religious beliefs. However, the court made a significant error when it upheld the state of Arizona’s restrictions that a lower court had said discriminated against minority voters. The rulings will make it easier to prove discrimination in individual transactions, but harder when reviewing the impact on hundreds of thousands of minority voters. In 2017, the state high court ruled unanimously that the florist in the case violated Washington anti-discrimination law when they rejected florist Barronelle Stutzman’s position on religious beliefs and that floral arrangements were a form of artistic expression and protected by the First Amendment. The ruling against Stutzman was appealed to the Supreme Court, which asked in 2018 for the State Supreme Court to take a new look at the case. After […]
