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From the opinion pages of the Wall Street Journal, this is Potomac Watch.

The Supreme Court hears from a Christian designer who wants to opt out from creating same-sex wedding websites as Raphael Warnock defeats

Herschel Walker in the Georgia Senate runoff. Welcome, I'm Kyle Peterson with the Wall Street Journal.

We are joined today by my colleagues, columnist Kim Strassel, and editorial board member, Meneh Uquibrua. Welcome to you both.

The case that the Supreme Court heard on Monday is called 303 Creative, and it involves a Colorado web designer named Lori Smith, who does not currently create websites.

She says she would like to add that as a line of business, but she would like to state up front on her own paid, but she will not create wedding websites for same-sex couples because that would compromise her Christian witness.

The tension here is with Colorado anti-discrimination law, which says that businesses that are open to the public can't discriminate based on disability, race, creed, color, sex, sexual orientation, marital status, national origin, or ancestry.

Let's start with a couple of clips of the justices sizing this up. Here to begin on one side is Justice Sonia Sotomayor.

This would be the first time in the court's history, correct? That it would say that a business open to the public as this petitioner has said it is, that it's open a commercial business open to the public, serving the public that it could refuse to serve a customer based on race, sex, religion.

Or sexual orientation, correct? Yes. And here taking a different view is Justice Brett Kavanaugh.

You say that hair stylist, landscapers, plumbers, caters, tailors, jewelers, and restaurants were nearly wouldn't have.

First amendment freespy, right, to decline to serve a same-sex wedding. At least that's how I read that reference in your brief.

But you say artists are different, like publishing houses. And I think the other side, here from them, but agree that artists are different because of the first amendment rights that artists possess.

But then, as at least as I read the briefs, the case comes down to a fairly narrow question of how do you characterize website designers?

Are they more like the restaurants and the jewelers and the tailors? Or are they more like the publishing houses and the other free speech analogues that are raised on the other side?

Kim, this is not the first time that the Supreme Court has been faced with this tension between laws that protect people in the marketplace and the constitutional protections for religious exercise, and in this case free speech.

But how do you size up this argument that the court heard on Monday?

Well, let's say just to start with that it's great that the Supreme Court is actually taking this by its horns, as it were, because back in 2018, we had another case, as you mentioned, also in Colorado involving a man named Jack Phillips, who was a baker, and he did not want to make cakes for same sex weddings.

And he ultimately won that, but it was on very narrow grounds because it had to do with the abusive behavior of the state civil rights commission toward him more than it did speech.

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