New Article on Eugene Volokh’s Amicus Briefs Regarding Compelled Speech and Antidiscrimination Law
I’ve just published an article in Constitutional Commentary entitled “The Volokh Briefs: Drawing the Line Against Compelled Speech in Public Accommodations,” 39 Const. Comm. 143 (2024) (available on SSRN here). Here’s the abstract:
In a series of important amicus briefs (the “Volokh Briefs”) filed over the course of about a decade, Professor Eugene Volokh was the principal architect of an argument for protecting expressive goods and services offered for sale in the commercial marketplace. This free speech protection would override certain applications of state antidiscrimination law.
The argument bore fruit in 303 Creative v. Elenis (2023), which held that under the First Amendment’s Free Speech Clause the state could not force a designer to fashion websites incorporating the designer’s customized text and graphics for the celebration of same-sex weddings. As Volokh and others urged, the Court’s holding applied even though the business was classified as a “public accommodation” under Colorado’s anti-discrimination law, which protects customers from discrimination based on certain characteristics like race, sex, and sexual orientation. The state had argued that refusing to
Article from Reason.com
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