Tucson Standard

Merissa Hamilton, who placed second in the 2020 mayoral race in Phoenix, recently responded on Twitter to a newspaper headline saying the June 29 U.S. Supreme Court decision in favor of a wedding website designer upheld the business's right to discriminate against gay clients. The ruling said that anti-discrimination laws should not force businesses to serve all clients.

“Supreme Court upholds the 1st Amendment,” Hamilton said in her June 30 tweet. “Fixed it for you.”

Hamilton’s tweet was in response to a headline in the Tucson Sentinel saying, “Supreme Court upholds Christian web designer's ability to discriminate against gay clients https://bit.ly/3CUDfGA #Tucson #Arizona.” The news article’s subhead said, “Ruling says anti-discrimination laws should not force businesses to serve all customers, regardless of their sexual orientation.”

The Supreme Court’s ruling was decided by a 6-3 margin, with the votes falling along party lines.

“The First Amendment envisions the United States as a rich and complex place where all persons are free to think and speak as they wish, not as the government demands,” Associate Justice Neil Gorsuch wrote in the majority opinion, quoted by the Sentinel.

But the dissenting justices lamented that the ruling identified a significant event in the country’s history.

“Today is a sad day in American constitutional law and in the lives of LGBT people,” Associate Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote in the dissenting opinion, quoted by the Sentinel. “The Supreme Court of the United States declares that a particular kind of business, though open to the public, has a constitutional right to refuse to serve members of a protected class.”

Hamilton is co-founder of EZAZ.org, an organization that aims to register Arizona voters, her Twitter bio said. She finished second in the 2020 Phoenix mayoral election running without a party affiliation, according to a Ballotpedia report. In 2016, she ran a write-in campaign for the U.S. Senate as a Libertarian in 2016.