burnthesheep wrote:
From Huff Post: this is our SCOTUS circus.......sorry for the weird text font mis-mashes.
"While hearing the case of a Christian graphic artist in Colorado
who says designing wedding websites for gay couples is against her faith, Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson asked attorney Kristen Waggoner whether, following her arguments, a hypothetical photographer would be able to refuse taking photos of a white Santa Claus with Black children
Waggoner, who is representing the designer, responded that the photographer
would be able to refuse taking the photos.
Alito later tried to turn around Jackson’s analogy by asking whether a Black Santa had to have his picture taken with a child dressed in a Ku Klux Klan robe.
Colorado Solicitor General Eric Olson said no, adding that “Ku Klux Klan outfits are not protected characteristics under public accommodation laws.”
Justice Sonia Sotomayor then chimed in that, “presumedly, that would be the same Ku Klux Klan outfit regardless whether if the child was Black or white or any other characteristic.”
Alito then joked, “You do see a lot of Black children in Ku Klux Klan outfits all the time.”"
Alito's quip is silly. If a photographer refuses to take pictures of someone wearing KKK robes, that does not mean they are discriminating against white people. Presumably, they are willing to photograph the 99.9999% of white people who don't wear KKK robes to the photo-shoot. In that hypothetical, the discrimination really is about the KKK robes, not the race of the person wearing them (even if we assume that the only people who wear KKK robes are white).
There may be close cases where it's not obvious whether the photographer really is objecting to the clothing or, instead, is using the clothing as a pretext for discriminating on the basis of race, etc. (e.g., if the photographer refuses to photograph anyone wearing a turban). But, Alito's KKK point is not one of those close cases.