[ad_1]
A Colorado woman who claimed her state’s support for same-sex marriage barred her from designing wedding websites, fueling a case that last month delivered a major US supreme court blow to LGBTQ+ rights, appears to have designed at least one wedding website before it was scrubbed from her archive.
The discovery, by the New Republic, followed reporting by that outlet and the Guardian which showed the request for a site for a same-sex wedding that lay at the heart of the 303 Creative v Elenis supreme court case appeared to have been a fabrication.
Represented by the rightwing Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF), the web designer behind 303 Creative, Lorie Smith, argued that her right to free speech, regarding her opposition to same-sex marriage, was “chilled” by a Colorado anti-discrimination law.
Claiming Smith was unable to design any wedding websites at all, for fear of falling foul of the state law, her attorneys told the supreme court: “For six years, she has been unable to speak in the marketplace.”
The six conservative justices who dominate the court ruled for Smith, delighting rightwingers and faith groups but appalling LGBTQ+ groups and other advocates of equal treatment under the law.
Questions over the supposed request for service have lingered. On Monday, the New Republic added to such disquiet.
The progressive magazine said that by using the Wayback Machine, a service from the Internet Archive, a researcher found what appeared to be an image of a wedding website designed by Smith around 2015.
The image, in a folder of “Recent Website Projects”, showed a couple walking on a beach, under a couple’s names and section headings including “You’re invited”, “Schedule”, “Accommodations” and “Travel Guide & FAQs”.
The name of the woman in the couple on the site matched the name on another image, for “Healthy4LifeColorado.com”. Other images were for a church, a site about French bulldogs and a campaign site for a Republican state politician. The last image matched a site currently live.
The apparent wedding site was found by Kate Redburn, a fellow at Columbia Law School in New York.
They told the New Republic: “I couldn’t believe it. The idea that she hadn’t made any wedding websites for anyone was so baked into the narrative around this case.”
The magazine said “a Colorado woman whose name matched the name of the bride” did not respond to requests for comment.
Through the ADF, Smith “acknowledged she had made the website as a gift for a family member and had subsequently removed it from her online portfolio before the lawsuit was filed”.
On Twitter, the ADF accused the New Republic of “manufacturing its fifth desperate attack” on Smith.