Sotomayor, J., dissenting
company’s] speech in order to excise certain ideas or viewpoints from the public dialogue.” The State’s “very purpose in seeking to apply its law,” in the majority’s view, is “the coercive elimination of dissenting ideas about marriage.” Ante, at 10–11 (internal quotation marks and brackets omitted).[1] That is an astonishing view of the law. It is contrary to the fact that a law requiring public-facing businesses to accept all comers “is textbook viewpoint neutral,” Christian Legal Soc. Chapter of Univ. of Cal., Hastings College of Law v. Martinez, 561 U. S. 661, 695 (2010); contrary to the fact that the Accommodation Clause and the State’s application of it here allows Smith to include in her company’s goods and services whatever “dissenting views about marriage” she wants; and contrary to this Court’s clear holdings that the purpose of a public accommodations law, as applied to the commercial act of discrimination in the sale of publicly available goods and services, is to ensure equal access to and equal dignity in the public marketplace, supra, at 4–6.
So it is dispiriting to read the majority suggest that this case resembles West Virginia Bd. of Ed. v. Barnette, 319 U. S. 624 (1943). A content-neutral equal-access policy is “a far cry” from a mandate to “endorse” a pledge chosen by the Government. FAIR, 547 U. S., at 62. This Court has said “it trivializes the freedom protected in Barnette” to equate the two. Ibid. Requiring Smith’s company to abide by a law against invidious discrimination in commercial sales to the public does not conscript her into espousing the government’s message. It does not “invad[e]” her “sphere of intellect” or violate her constitutional “right to differ.” Ante, at 2, 7 (internal quotation marks omitted). All it does is
- ↑ The majority’s repeated invocation of this Orwellian thought policing is revealing of just how much it misunderstands this case. See ante, at 10–12, 19–20, 24–25 (claiming that the State seeks to “eliminate ideas” and that it will punish Smith unless she “conforms her views to the State’s”).
