After losing at the appellate level, state officials turned to the U.S. Supreme Court. They asked the justices to consider the dismissals and determine whether they amounted to religious discrimination.
On Tuesday, the Supreme Court declined to get involved, but Justice Samuel Alito published a statement emphasizing the importance of the issues involved.
Whether jurors can be dismissed based on their religious beliefs about sexuality is a “very serious and important question,” he wrote, one that he anticipated when the Supreme Court legalized same-sex marriage.
“In this case, the court below reasoned that a person who still holds traditional religious views on questions of sexual morality is presumptively unfit to serve on a jury in a case involving a party who is a lesbian. That holding exemplifies the danger that I anticipated in Obergefell v. Hodges, namely, that Americans who do not hide their adherence to traditional religious beliefs about homosexual conduct will be ‘labeled as bigots and treated as such’ by the government,” Alito said.
The Supreme Court won’t yet consider whether potential jurors can be dismissed based on their religious beliefs. | By @kelsey_dallas https://t.co/8yVvoH8BE8
— Deseret News (@Deseret) February 28, 2024