Getting the Supreme Court to decide that businesses have a constitutional right to discriminate against protected classes has its costs. I’m not talking about the moral ones — no one seems to care about those. I’m talking about money. 303 Creative’s web designer can reject all of the gay business she wants, but somebody is going to have to pay the $2M in lawyer fees. NBC News has coverage:
A Denver-area web designer who won a U.S. Supreme Court ruling last year that said the right to free speech allows some businesses to refuse to provide services for same-sex weddings has asked a judge in Colorado to award her nearly $2 million in legal fees.
Conservative legal organization Alliance Defending Freedom, which represented Christian web designer Lorie Smith in her fight against a Colorado anti-discrimination law, in a court filing on Wednesday said their victory after seven years entitled them to compensation…They said their $2 million request would reimburse them for 2,174.4 hours of work on the litigation, a 36% reduction from the 3,374.9 billed hours they devoted to the case.
On balance, the two million ask is probably pennies on the dollar compared to the actual costs of their win. All the marketing that went into publicizing the case as a rallying cry for keeping the faith couldn’t have been cheap. Best of luck to them, maybe Crow might chip in if he’s not too busy finding historical artifacts to gift to Clarence Thomas.
Web Designer Wants Legal Fees For Supreme Court Win In free speech, LGBTQ Rights Case [NBC News]
Chris Williams became a social media manager and assistant editor for Above the Law in June 2021. Prior to joining the staff, he moonlighted as a minor Memelord™ in the Facebook group Law School Memes for Edgy T14s. He endured Missouri long enough to graduate from Washington University in St. Louis School of Law. He is a former boatbuilder who cannot swim, a published author on critical race theory, philosophy, and humor, and has a love for cycling that occasionally annoys his peers. You can reach him by email at [email protected] and by tweet at @WritesForRent.
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