Originally Published: 30 JUN 23 10:03 ET

Updated: 30 JUN 23 11:28 ET

By Ariane de Vogue and Devan Cole, CNN

(CNN) — The Supreme Court Friday ruled in favor of a Christian web designer in Colorado who refuses to create websites to celebrate same-sex weddings out of religious objections.

The 6-3 decision was penned by Justice Neil Gorsuch and joined by Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Samuel Alito, Amy Coney Barrett, Brett Kavanaugh and Clarence Thomas. Justice Sonia Sotomayor penned a dissent joined by her liberal colleagues Justices Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson.

The court’s decision represents a devastating blow to LGBTQ protections, which have in recent years been bolstered by landmark decisions at the nation’s highest court, including one authored three years ago by Gorsuch in which the majority expanded protections for LGBTQ workers, and the 2015 case legalizing same-sex marriage nationwide.

The ruling – rooted in free speech grounds – will pierce state public accommodation laws for those businesses who sell so-called “expressive” goods. It is the latest victory for religious conservatives at the high court and will alarm critics who fear the current court is setting its sights on overturning the 2015 marriage case.

Gorsuch wrote that “the First Amendment envisions the United States as a rich and complex place where all persons are free to think and speak as they wish, not as the government demands.” He said Colorado sought to “deny that promise.”

“All manner of speech – from ‘pictures, films, paintings, drawings, and engravings,’ to ‘oral utterance and the printed word’ – qualify for the First Amendment’s protections; no less can hold true when it comes to speech like Ms. Smith’s conveyed over the Internet,” Gorsuch said.

In dissent, Sotomayor said the decision will undermine the government’s compelling interest in ensuring that all Americans have equal access to the public marketplace.

“Today, the Court, for the first time in its history, grants a business open to the public a constitutional right to refuse to serve members of a protected class,” she wrote.

“Specifically, the Court holds that the First Amendment exempts a website design company from a state law that prohibits the company from denying wedding websites to same-sex couples if the company chooses to sell those websites to the public,” she wrote.

Sotomayor called this a “sad day in American constitutional law and the lives of LGBT people.”

“By issuing this new license to discriminate in a case brought by a company that seeks to deny same-sex couples the full and equal enjoyment of its services, the immediate, symbolic effect of the decision is to mark gays and lesbians for second-class status,” she wrote in dissent.

She said the “decision itself inflicts a kind of stigmatic harm, on top of any harm caused by denials of service.”

“The opinion of the Court is, quite literally, a notice that reads: ‘Some services may be denied to same-sex couples.’”

She suggested that decision would be more far-reaching. “The decision’s logic cannot be limited to discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation or gender identity.”

“The decision threatens to balkanize the market and to allow the exclusion of other groups from many services,” she said, adding that “a website designer could equally refuse to create a wedding website for an interracial couple, for example.”

But in a footnote, Gorsuch pushed back. “Our decision today does not concern – much less endorse – anything like the ‘straight couples only’ notices the dissent conjures out of thin air.”

Kagan’s dissent and Gorsuch’s switch

The court’s decision came on the final day of Pride Month, an annual celebration of the LGBTQ community and its movement for equality that takes place throughout June.

In her dissent, Sotomayor laid out key moments in that decades-long movement as she explained how states came to pass the kinds of laws at issue in the case and why they’re necessary for members of the community. “Who could forget the brutal murder of Matthew Shepard?” she wrote, adding later: “Or the Pulse nightclub massacre, the second-deadliest mass shooting in U. S. history?”

“One significant change has been the addition of sexual orientation and gender identity to public accommodations laws,” Sotomayor wrote. “LGBT people do not seek any special treatment. All they seek is to exist in public. To inhabit public spaces on the same terms and conditions as everyone else.”

Gorsuch’s opinion delivering a massive loss to the LGBTQ community likely came as a surprise to members of the LGBTQ community after he delivered them a key win in 2020.

In that case, Bostock v. Clayton County, the conservative justice wrote for the majority that Title VII of the Civil Rights Act, which bars discrimination “because of sex,” also covers claims based on sexual orientation and gender identity.

The decision extended protections to millions of workers nationwide and was a defeat for the Trump administration, which argued that the sex discrimination bar in Title VII did not extend to claims of gender identity and sexual orientation.

This story has been updated with additional information.