The Supreme Court on Friday greatly expanded the rights of people who want to discriminate against same-sex couples in a case involving an amateur website designer who was never even asked to make a website for a same-sex wedding.

In 303 Creative v. Elenis, amateur web designer Lori Smith asked the court to grant her the right under the First Amendment to refuse service to gay and lesbian couples due to her Christian religious beliefs. But Smith’s request was wholly speculative. She had not been hired to make a website for a same-sex couple and, therefore, had never refused such work. In fact, she’s never made a single wedding website.

Despite the underlying claim being totally made up, the court sided with Smith’s religious liberty argument. In a 6-3 vote, the court’s conservatives ruled that a civil rights law in Colorado that bars anti-LGBTQ+ discrimination violated Smith’s First Amendment speech rights. In doing so, they made it much easier for businesses to discriminate. A new wave of litigation further expanding discrimination is likely to follow.

Smith had claimed that Colorado’s anti-discrimination act, which prohibits denial of goods, services or facilities “because of disability, race, creed, color, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, gender expression, marital status, national origin, or ancestry,” violated her First Amendment rights by requiring her to take commissions with what she said was a message she did not agree with — specifically, websites celebrating the weddings of same-sex couples.

The court agreed. In the majority opinion, Justice Neil Gorsuch wrote, “the First Amendment’s protections belong to all, not just to speakers whose motives the government finds worthy. In this case, Colorado seeks to force an individual to speak in ways that align with its views but defy her conscience about a matter of major significance.”

“If she wishes to speak, she must either speak as the State demands or face sanctions for expressing her own beliefs,” he wrote.

Justice Sonia Sotomayor, joined by the other two liberal justices Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson, dissented in another blistering opinion.

“Five years ago, this Court recognized the ‘general rule’ that religious and philosophical objections to gay marriage ‘do not allow business owners and other actors in the economy and in society to deny protected persons equal access to goods and services under a neutral and generally applicable public accommodations law,’” she wrote. “Today, the Court, for the first time in its history, grants a business open to the public a constitutional right to refuse to serve members of a protected class.”

This is a developing story. Please check back for updates.