Opinion of the Court
by the First Amendment can sometimes raise difficult questions. But this case presents no complication of that kind. The parties have stipulated that Ms. Smith seeks to engage in expressive activity. And the Tenth Circuit has recognized her services involve “pure speech.” See supra, at 6, 9. Nothing the dissent says can alter this—nor can it displace the First Amendment protections that follow.
The dissent’s treatment of precedent parallels its handling of the facts. Take its remarkable suggestion that a government forcing an individual to create speech on weighty issues with which she disagrees—all, as the Tenth Circuit found, with the goal of “[e]liminating” views it does not share, 6 F. 4th, at 1178—only “incidental[ly]” burdens First Amendment liberties. Post, at 26–35. Far from embracing a notion like that, our cases have rejected it time after time—including in the context of public accommodations laws. See Parts II–IV, supra; FAIR, 547 U. S., at 61–64 (no government may affect a “speaker’s own message” by “forc[ing]” her to “accommodate” views she does not hold); Hurley, 515 U. S., at 563, 566 (using a public accommodations law to compel parade organizers to include speech they did not believe was no mere “ ‘incidental’ ” infringement on First Amendment rights); Dale, 530 U. S., at 659 (employing a public accommodations law to require the Boy Scouts to alter their admissions policies had more than “an incidental effect on protected speech”).[1]
- ↑ The dissent observes that public accommodations laws may sometimes touch on speech incidentally as they work to ensure ordinary, non-expressive goods and services are sold on equal terms. Cf. post, at 24–27 (citing Sorrell v. IMS Health Inc., 564 U. S. 552 (2011); Rumsfeld v. FAIR, 547 U. S. 47 (2006); United States v. O’Brien, 391 U. S. 367 (1968)). But as Hurley observed, there is nothing “incidental” about an infringement on speech when a public accommodations law is applied “peculiar[ly]” to compel expressive activity. Hurley v. Irish-American Gay, Lesbian and Bisexual Group of Boston, Inc., 515 U. S. 557, 572 (1995).
