'Sham' website customer likely didn't affect Supreme Court ruling on same-sex weddings, experts say

The Supreme Court’s recent ruling in favor of an evangelical Christian web designer who refused to work on same-sex weddings didn't hinge on what now appears to have been a request from a fake customer, legal experts said Monday.

In a case that wound up dealing a setback to LGBTQ rights, the focus on the potential customer first arose after web designer Lorie Smith said in a previous court filing that someone named Stewart had reached out to her in 2016 about putting together a website for his marriage to a person named Mike.

That narrative was thrown into question last week after The New Republic published an article on Stewart, who denied ever having reached out to Smith. It quoted him saying he was a web designer who has been married to a woman for years.