Massachusetts Attorney General Maura Healey is leading a coalition of 20 state attorneys general in filing a legal brief that supports Virginia’s anti-discrimination law. That law is being challenged in a case before a US Court of Appeals involving a photographer who wants to advertise they won’t offer wedding photography to LGBTQ+ couples.
“Business owners cannot use the First Amendment as a shield to discriminate against their customers,” said Healey in a recent mass.gov press statement. “We are filing this brief to support civil rights protections for LGBTQ+ people and stand up for the rights of all Americans to fair and equal treatment.”
Explains the mass.gov statement:
In the brief, the attorneys general argue that states across the country have enacted laws to prohibit discrimination against LGBTQ+ people in places of public accommodations to prevent severe economic, personal, and social harm. Discrimination by places of public accommodation “denies equal access to important goods and services and, by segregating the market, has a well-established ‘substantial and harmful effect’ on the economy.” …
[The] attorneys general call on the Court to follow the Supreme Court’s instruction to ensure that LGBTQ+ individuals are not subjected to “indignities when they seek goods and services in an open market.”
Today’s brief follows many other instances where AG Healey led a coalition in defending public accommodation laws in other states, including New York’s anti-discrimination law in July 2021, Minnesota’s law in March 2018, and Colorado’s law in October 2017 in the Masterpiece Cakeshop case.
In 2016, AG Healey worked closely with advocates, the business community, and transgender families to successfully garner support for the passage of the Massachusetts’ Public Accommodations Law.
The Bay State’s public accommodations law “prohibits, among other things, making any distinction, discrimination, or restriction in admission to or treatment in a place of public accommodation based on race, color, religious creed, national origin, sex, gender identity, sexual orientation, deafness, blindness, or any physical or mental disability, or ancestry.”
Read the complete mass.gov statement here.
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