Page:303 Creative LLC v. Elenis.pdf/3

Syllabus

at 654.

These cases illustrate that the First Amendment protects an individual’s right to speak his mind regardless of whether the government considers his speech sensible and well intentioned or deeply “misguided,” Hurley, 515 U. S., at 574, and likely to cause “anguish” or “incalculable grief,” Snyder v. Phelps, 562 U. S. 443, 456. Generally, too, the government may not compel a person to speak its own preferred messages. See Tinker v. Des Moines Independent Community School Dist., 393 U. S. 503, 505. Pp. 6–9.

(b) Applying these principles to the parties’ stipulated facts, the Court agrees with the Tenth Circuit that the wedding websites Ms. Smith seeks to create qualify as pure speech protected by the First Amendment under this Court’s precedents. Ms. Smith’s websites will express and communicate ideas—namely, those that “celebrate and promote the couple’s wedding and unique love story” and those that “celebrat[e] and promot[e]” what Ms. Smith understands to be a marriage. Speech conveyed over the internet, like all other manner of speech, qualifies for the First Amendment’s protections. And the Court agrees with the Tenth Circuit that the wedding websites Ms. Smith seeks to create involve her speech, a conclusion supported by the parties’ stipulations, including that Ms. Smith intends to produce a final story for each couple using her own words and original artwork. While Ms. Smith’s speech may combine with the couple’s in a final product, an individual “does not forfeit constitutional protection simply by combining multifarious voices” in a single communication. Hurley, 515 U. S., at 569.

Ms. Smith seeks to engage in protected First Amendment speech; Colorado seeks to compel speech she does not wish to provide. As the Tenth Circuit observed, if Ms. Smith offers wedding websites celebrating marriages she endorses, the State intends to compel her to create custom websites celebrating other marriages she does not. 6 F. 4th 1160, 1178. Colorado seeks to compel this speech in order to “excis[e] certain ideas or viewpoints from the public dialogue.” Turner Broadcasting System, Inc. v. FCC, 512 U. S. 633, 642. Indeed, the Tenth Circuit recognized that the coercive “[e]liminati[on]” of dissenting ideas about marriage constitutes Colorado’s “very purpose” in seeking to apply its law to Ms. Smith. 6 F. 4th, at 1178. But while the Tenth Circuit thought that Colorado could compel speech from Ms. Smith consistent with the Constitution, this Court’s First Amendment precedents teach otherwise. In Hurley, Dale, and Barnette, the Court found that governments impermissibly compelled speech in violation of the First Amendment when they tried to force speakers to accept a message with which they disagreed. Here, Colorado seeks to put Ms. Smith to a similar choice. If she wishes to speak, she must either speak