Owners Eric and Sara Smith / Born Again Used Books
A Christian bookstore in Colorado is suing over a new law that considers it discrimination to use biologically accurate pronouns instead of a person’s preferred pronouns.
Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF), the legal nonprofit representing Born Again Used Books, stated in a news release that Colorado recently updated its anti-discrimination law to redefine “gender expression” as “how an individual chooses to be addressed.” Failing to use a person’s preferred pronouns, name, or titles is now considered illegal.
Born Again Used Books believes that sex cannot be changed and wishes to make that belief an official store-wide policy, ADF said. The bookstore would like to be able to explain the Christian reasoning behind the policy in a statement on its blog, but the updated anti-discrimination law bans any mention of adhering to biologically correct language.
In the lawsuit, the bookstore notes that it serves every customer, regardless of gender identity, but argues that it cannot require its employees to use preferred pronouns.
“To do so would be to affirm the view that a person’s sex can and sometimes should be changed — a view that contradicts the Bookstore’s Christian beliefs,” the lawsuit reads, adding that the law additionally violates the First and 14th Amendments.
According to the lawsuit, if the bookstore does not contradict its religious beliefs by using preferred pronouns, it faces cease and desist orders, investigations, hearings, and fines.
“The government has no need or right to force Americans to profess ideological views they oppose,” the lawsuit reads. “Our pluralistic country is big enough and sturdy enough to allow people of good faith to express different views, even when the government disagrees. The Constitution demands it. And Colorado is better for it.”
ADF Senior Counsel Hal Frampton, director of the ADF Center for Conscience Initiatives, stated in the release that “the government has no business trying to strip traditional views about sex and gender from the marketplace of ideas,” which he noted is a principle that the Supreme Court has repeatedly upheld.
“Nor can the state compel Coloradans to speak in ways that violate their deeply held religious beliefs,” he added. “Born Again Used Books shouldn’t have to continually choose between violating the law and speaking consistent with its Christian beliefs.”
