‘Tyranny’: Legal Expert Says Ruling in Favor of Anti-LGBTQ Discrimination Makes It ‘Impossible’ to Respect Supreme Court

Well-known legal expert Andrew Weissmann is blasting the Roberts Supreme Court for its ruling Friday that allows an evangelical Christian designer to discriminate against same-sex couples in favor of what the court claims is her First Amendment right to free speech.

Weissmann, a professor of law at NYU Law School, the former lead prosecutor for Special Counsel Robert Mueller, and a former FBI General Counsel, says the case should have been rejected by the Supreme Court, and is evidence of “tyranny” because it was not.

MSNBC’s Nicolle Wallace pointed to Justice Sonia Sotomayor’s warning to her fellow Supreme Court jurists last year that the Dobbs decision, striking down Roe v. Wade, would bring a “stench” to the nation’s highest court.

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“When Justice Sotomayor described the ‘stench’ on the court,” Wallace said, she “was talking about the way Dobbs got to the court. It was by conservative legislatures waiting for the appointments of Trump’s picks to the court and then doing the case that would overturn Roe vs. Wade. But at least it was a real case, right? I mean, this is absolute fabrication. This is Justice Sotomayor’s ‘stench’ on steroids.”

The web designer who brought the case, 303 Creative v. Elenis, claimed that she wanted to expand her business to produce wedding websites, but because Colorado law bans discrimination, she would have to make ten for same-sex couples if asked. She brought the suit, despite initially at least, having no same-sex couple ask her to make them a wedding website. Just one day ago The New Republic reported the only possible client, who was listed in a court filing, says he is straight, he never contacted the designer, Lorie Smith, and at the time he allegedly did, he was married, to a woman.

Weissman explained why he sees the Court ruling as tyrannical.

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“In this country, you cannot bring a case that is a hypothetical,” Weissman said. “You can’t say to the court, ‘you know, here’s the situation I’m thinking of in my mind, can you give me a ruling on what you would do?’ You need to have something called a case or controversy, there has to be a real dispute.”

Weissmann then exclaimed, “the thing that’s so amazing about this case is that this is somebody who – there was no real issue. There was no complaint. This wasn’t even somebody who had opened up a business. This was somebody who said, ‘Hey, I’m thinking I might open a business and I’m thinking that I might want to discriminate against same-sex marriage couples,’ and it turns out even all of that didn’t raise a case or controversy because there was nobody who was actually asking. There was no same-sex couple who was actually asking for the person to do anything. So the whole thing was a hypothetical.”

“Just just remarkable that that becomes the vehicle. And as Justice Kagan said, any court that was functioning as a court – not as a legislature – as a court would have said, ‘there is no standing, there is no case here, we’re done.’ Meaning, you have to wait for another vehicle. Maybe you’d come up with the same horrendous decision later.”

“But that’s why, as a lawyer, it is so dispiriting because if you do not have honesty and integrity in the courts, and you aren’t operating with the rule of law, then you’re in tyranny. I mean, this is John Locke, ‘wherever law ends, tyranny begins.'”

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“And if you don’t have the Supreme Court,” Weissmann continued, “at least, you know, in good faith, applying the law, it is impossible to have respect for that institution. And I know that Justice Roberts gave a plea at the end of his decision saying that he really hopes that people don’t take this the wrong way, etc. I mean, but he is, he really only has himself to blame in terms of the court that he is leading.”

Watch below or at this link.

“In this country, you cannot bring a case that is a hypothetical… There has to be a real dispute… This is somebody who, there was no real issue, there was no complaint. This wasn’t even somebody who had opened up a business” – @AWeissmann_ w/ @NicolleDWallace pic.twitter.com/dNH07V0wgY

— Deadline White House (@DeadlineWH) June 30, 2023

Image by MitchellShapiroPhotography via Flickr and a CC license