In a 6-3 ruling at the end of the 2022-23 term, the Supreme Court handed down a major First Amendment decision about the intersection of free expression rights and anti-discrimination laws in 303 Creative v. Elenis. The Court held that Colorado could not force a website designer to design a site and create expressive designs that she disagreed with, which included creating a website for same-sex marriages. In this episode, host Jeffrey Rosen is joined by ACLU National Legal Director David Cole and New York Times opinion columnist David French to break down the 303 Creative decision, as well as review the 2022-23 term as a whole, other key decisions from this past year, and where the Court is headed next.
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Today’s episode was produced by Lana Ulrich, Bill Pollock, Sam Desai, and Samson Mostashari. Special thanks to the team at the Aspen Ideas Festival for this recording. Research was provided by Yara Daraiseh, Rosemary Li, Tomas Vallejo, Connor Rust, Lana Ulrich, and Samson Mostashari.
Participants
David Cole is the national legal director of the ACLU. Cole has litigated many constitutional cases in the Supreme Court, including Texas v. Johnson and United States v. Eichman; and Masterpiece Cakeshop v. Colorado Civil Rights Commission. His most recent book is “Engines of Liberty: How Citizen Movements Succeed” (2016).
David French is a New York Times Opinion columnist. Before that, he was a senior editor at The Dispatch, which he helped start, and a contributing writer at The Atlantic. His most recent book is Divided We Fall: America's Secession Threat and How to Restore Our Nation (2020).
Jeffrey Rosen is the president and CEO of the National Constitution Center, a nonpartisan nonprofit organization devoted to educating the public about the U.S. Constitution. Rosen is also a professor of law at The George Washington University Law School and a contributing editor of The Atlantic.
Additional Resources:
- 303 Creative LLC v. Elenis (2023)
- ACLU (David Cole as Counsel of Record), “Brief for Amici Curiae American Civil Liberties Union and American Civil Liberties Union of Colorado in Support of Respondents”, 303 Creative LLC v. Elenis
- David Cole, “The Supreme Court Picks its Battles” The New York Review (July 4, 2023)
- David Cole, ACLU, “Supreme Court Term in Review: Reconciling Our Losses and Wins” July 6, 2023
- David French, “Brief of 15 Family Policy Organizations as Amici Curiae in Support of Petitioners”, 303 Creative LCC v. Elenis
- David French, The New York Times “How Christians and Drag Queens Are Defending the First Amendment” (June 30, 2023)
- David French, “Harvard Undermined Itself on Affirmative Action,” New York Times (June 29, 2023)
- David French, “The Supreme Court Just Helped Save American Democracy from Trumpism,” New York Times (June 27, 2023)
Transcript
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This transcript may not be in its final form, accuracy may vary, and it may be updated or revised in the future.
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