This is the Cato Daily Podcast for Tuesday, March 18, 2014.

I'm Caleb Brown.

When must your First Amendment right to free expression be trumped by the demands of

anti-discrimination laws.

Ilia Shapiro, a senior fellow in constitutional studies at the Cato Institute argues that in a world

of myriad choices for services, it's not clear why the state should compel artistic business people to serve ideas

they oppose. This appears to be one of those cases where you have the First

Amendment coming into conflict with a legal term that's thrown around a lot which is a public accommodation.

Help us sort those things out.

Well, more broadly, anti-discrimination law, because what's going on here is the New Mexico photographer who has served

gay clients in the past did not want to work a same-sex commitment ceremony because it was against her religious beliefs.

And the New Mexico Supreme Court ultimately said that she had to, that it was a violation of

New Mexico's anti-discrimination law because as you said a photography

business or any small business I guess is a public accommodation akin to a

restaurant or a hotel that if you throw open your doors for business you have to serve all comers.

But that's not true of almost any business that is, as you say, artistic.

Right, you can't force a writer say.

So you have a freelance writer who writes press releases and does other corporate communications

or what have you and is asked by a religious organization to do some

communications work for them and he objects he he finds their beliefs don't

accord with him according to the New Mexico ruling,

he would be in violation of the law

...