Emilee Carpenter is seen in a Fox News Channel screengrab. An Upstate New York wedding photographer has lost her bid to refuse service to same-sex couples after a federal judge dismissed with prejudice her lawsuit against the state. Emilee Carpenter , a photographer and blogger based in the Southern Tier, sued the state in April, alleging that the state’s human rights law violated her First Amendment rights to free speech, free association, and free religious expression. She also said the law violated the establishment clause and her right to due process. Carpenter named New York Attorney General Letitia James and Interim Human Rights Commissioner Jonathan Smith as defendants. Carpenter said that the law violates her First Amendment right to freely exercise her religion because she uses her wedding photography business to exercise and express her religious beliefs about marriage. In a ruling issued Monday, U.S. District Judge Frank P. Geraci Jr. said that he did not find Carpenter’s arguments persuasive and that the state’s human rights law is neutral. “The mere fact that a state enforces its public accommodation laws notwithstanding the religious motivations of the accommodation does not evince impermissible hostility” toward religion, Geraci wrote. Carpenter also said […]
