Joanna Duka and Breanna Koski of Brush & Nib Studio had been involved in a legal battle over a city ordinance the artists said would violate their First Amendment rights by forcing them to create art for same-sex weddings.
Duka and Koski are Christians who own a business in Phoenix. They believe marriage is between a man and a woman.
“They looked around the country and they saw people getting sued for declining to celebrate same-sex weddings and they wanted to know what their rights are because they often create wedding related artwork like wedding invitations and wedding signs,” the artists’ attorney Jonathan Scruggs of Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF) said on The Todd Starnes Show. “They found that a Phoenix law would compel them to do that under threats of six months in jail and $2500 in fines per day, and so they went to court and said ‘we think we have these freedoms of speech and religion.’”
The Arizona Supreme Court agreed with the artists on Monday.
“We could not be more excited,” Joanna Duka told The Todd Starnes Show. “It’s a great win for Arizonans, for other artists, for freedom.”
Breanna Koski said this can be misinterpreted for discrimination, “and that’s not the case at all.”
“We do serve everybody happily and we love everybody, (but) we just can’t create every message,” added Koski. “Something that violates our conscience, it’s not something that we should have to do, and the Arizona Supreme Court held that up Monday.”
So, what happens now? Does the law go away, or will the city file an appeal?
“The city can’t appeal, it’s all over,” answered Scruggs. “What the court basically said was ‘you can’t apply the law in a way that violates freedom of speech and freedom of religion,’ so, there could be possible applications of the law that are totally fine.”
Read the rest at: Same Sex Artist