New York Times

Justices Decline Cases on Gay Rights and Campaign Finance

By ADAM LIPTAK APRIL 7, 2014
WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court on Monday declined to hear closely
watched cases on gay rights, campaign finance and lethal injections. As is their
custom, the justices gave no reasons for turning down the appeals.

The gay rights case, Elane Photography v. Willock, No. 13-585, was an
appeal from a wedding photographer in New Mexico who asserted a
constitutional right to refuse to provide her services to gay and lesbian couples.

The issue was broadly similar to one argued before the court last month,
over whether companies may refuse to provide insurance coverage for
contraception on religious grounds. But the New Mexico case was based not on a
claim of religious liberty but on one of free speech.

The photographer, Elaine Huguenin, objected to a New Mexico law
prohibiting businesses open to the public from discriminating against gay men
and lesbians. She said that requiring her to photograph same-sex weddings
violated her First Amendment rights because she was forced to say something she
did not believe.

She rejected a request from Vanessa Willock and Misti Collinsworth to
document their commitment ceremony. The women, who hired another
photographer, filed a discrimination complaint against Ms. Huguenin’s studio,
Elane Photography.

The New Mexico Supreme Court ruled for the couple, saying Ms.
Huguenin’s “services can be regulated, even though those services include artistic
and creative work.” Laws banning discrimination, the court said, apply to
“creative or expressive professions.”
Justice Richard C. Bosson issued an ambivalent concurrence expressing
sympathy for Ms. Huguenin and her husband.

“The Huguenins are not trying to prohibit anyone from marrying,” he wrote.
“They only want to be left alone to conduct their photography business in a
manner consistent with their moral convictions.” Instead, they “are compelled by
law to compromise the very religious beliefs that inspire their lives,” he added.
“Though the rule of law requires it,” Justice Bosson wrote, “the result is
sobering.”

The justices also declined to hear a campaign finance case, Iowa Right to
Life Committee v. Tooker, No. 13-407, which was a challenge to an Iowa law that
bans contributions from corporations but allows them from unions. The case
was brought by James Bopp Jr., one of the lawyers on the winning side on
Wednesday in McCutcheon v. Federal Election Commission, a major campaign
finance case.

The McCutcheon decision struck down aggregate contribution limits in
federal elections.

Mr. Bopp challenged the Iowa law on two grounds. He said distinguishing
between corporations and unions violated equal protection principles. In any
event, he added, “banning corporate political contributions violates the First
Amendment.”

The Supreme Court also declined to hear two cases concerning whether
death row inmates have a constitutional right to know what chemicals states
plan to use to execute them.

The challenges said the court’s attention was needed to bring order to a
capital justice system in disarray. Drug shortages and boycotts have caused
prisons to scramble to find lethal chemicals, raising what opponents of the death
penalty say is the possibility of executions so painful that they violate the Eighth
Amendment’s ban on cruel and unusual punishment.

In January, executions in two states seemed to go awry. An Oklahoma
inmate’s last words, 12 seconds after he was injected with lethal chemicals, were:
“I feel my whole body burning.” A week later, an Ohio inmate “struggled, made
guttural noises, gasped for air and choked for about 10 minutes before
succumbing to a new, two-drug execution method,” according to The Columbus
Dispatch.

One case, Sepulvado v. Jindal, No. 13-892, concerned Christopher
Sepulvado, who was convicted of scalding and beating his 6-year-old stepson to
death. Mr. Sepulvado’s lawyers asked the Supreme Court to decide whether due
process “entitles a condemned inmate with timely notice of the method by which
he will be executed.”

A second case, Zink v. Lombardi, No. 13-8435, was brought by death row
inmates in Missouri. It asked the justices to review an appeals court decision that
required them to specify an acceptable form of execution in order to challenge
the one that the state intended to employ.

A version of this article appears in print on April 8, 2014, on page A13 of the New York edition with the
headline: Justices Won’t Hear an Appeal on Gay Bias.