What you need to know about an apparently fake document in a gay rights case

After the Supreme Court ruled last week that a Colorado graphic designer has the right to refuse to create gay marriage websites, critics of the decision questioned a form in the court documents in the case that showed a gay couple had sought the help of the designer, Lorie Smith.

The man who supposedly submitted the form said he was unaware of its existence to this day a reporter from The New Republic called him. He is also straight, married to a woman and a supporter of gay rights. The apparent falsehoods, critics said, undermined the court’s decision.

What is known about the request?

It was apparently filed on the website of Ms. Smith’s company, 303 Creative, on the afternoon of Sept. 21, 2016, the day after she filed a lawsuit in federal court in Colorado over an aspect of the state’s anti-discrimination law. to challenge. She said in the lawsuit that the law violated the First Amendment by forcing her to embrace beliefs that conflict with her faith.

The lawsuit was the subject of reporting and may have prompted the filing.

The form was allegedly filled out by someone named Stewart, and it contained a real email address and phone number. “We are getting married early next year and would like to do some design work for our invitations, place names etc,” Stewart wrote, saying his partner’s name was Mike. “We can also extend to a website.”

There is no doubt that Mrs Smith never complied with the request. But she later mentioned it in court documents, apparently to suggest her case was more than hypothetical.

What did the parties tell the Supreme Court?

Ms. Smith’s lawyers entered a judgment in the case their main job. “Despite Colorado banning Smith from disclosing her wedding services,” they wrote, “she has already received at least one request for a same-sex wedding website.” A page reference followed a large appendix of previous filings jointly filed by the parties, including the form.

In their main job in the case, Colorado attorneys said the form was irrelevant to the court’s decision.

“The company” — a reference to Ms. Smith’s company — “claims that, after filing a lawsuit, it received a ‘same-sex marriage website request’,” the letter said. “But the ‘request’ the company is referring to wasn’t a request for a website at all, but a response to an online form asking for ‘invitations’ and ‘place names’, stating that the person ‘would also may extend to a website.'”

“The company has not responded to that online form,” Colorado’s briefing said. “The company has also taken no steps to verify that a genuine prospect submitted the form.”

Lawrence Pacheco, a spokesman for Phil Weiser, the state’s attorney general, said Colorado’s briefing noted the request was problematic. “We pointed out that it wasn’t a real request,” he said.

In an interview last year, Mr. Weiser focused on what he believed to be the bigger question in the case: the lack of a meaningful file.

“This is a fabricated case,” Mr. Weiser said. “No websites have been created for a wedding yet. No one has been rejected. We are in a world of pure hypotheses.”

What did the Supreme Court say about the case?

Neither the majority opinion nor the dissenting opinion mentioned the alleged request or seemed to give it any weight.

Judge Neil M. Gorsuch, writing for the majority on Friday, approvingly summarized an appeals court ruling that said Ms. Smith and her company had established legal capacity because they feared punishment under a Colorado anti-discrimination law if they offered marriage-related services, but turned down people who wanted to celebrate a same-sex union.

Justice Sonia Sotomayor disagreed and did not discuss the request or standing question.

What do Lorie Smith’s lawyers say?

“Whether it was real or if it was a troll, we don’t know,” Kristen Waggoner, the president of the Alliance Defending Freedom, which represents Ms. Smith, said in an interview.

Investigating the question would have been legally dangerous, Ms Wagoner said. “If Lorie succeeded,” she said, “Colorado would have already claimed they would prosecute her for breaking the law.”

Ms Wagoner said critics should focus on what the court decided. “They should criticize the ruling based on its substance rather than perpetuating untruths about the case,” she said.

What does Stewart say?

“No one related to this case has ever contacted me to try and verify the information in the court documents as correct,” Stewart said Monday, asking that his last name not be used. He added that he was “disappointed with the Supreme Court ruling and its implications for the LGBTQ+ community.”

What happens now?

Mr. Pacheco, the spokesman for the Colorado Attorney General, said his office is “assessing whether additional action is needed.” But there is little reason to believe that the Supreme Court, which did not appear to be acknowledging the request, would be open to reconsidering its ruling based on the recent revelations about it.