Sotomayor makes dubious nightclub shooting claim while dissenting in Christian web designer case

Supreme Court Associate Justice Sonia Sotomayor appeared to make the unsubstantiated claim that a 2016 mass shooting at a gay nightclub was prompted by anti-LGBT sentiment as part of her dissent in a Friday Supreme Court ruling that determined a Christian web designer could not be forced to endorse messages which she disagreed.

That case saw the justices rule 6-3 that Lorie Smith, an evangelical Christian, has a First Amendment right to refuse to make wedding websites for same-sex marriages. Sotomayor, writing for the minority, asserted that "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 went on to say that "a social system of discrimination created an environment in which LGBT people were unsafe," before pointing to the Pulse nightclub shooting and the murder of Matthew Shepard in an unrelated incident as examples of attacks on that demographic.

"Who could forget the brutal murder of Matthew Shepard? ... Or the Pulse nightclub massacre, the second-deadliest U.S. history?" her dissent reads.

In seeming to connect the Pulse shooting with explicitly anti-LGBT acts, the justice came into conflict with the FBI and law enforcement, which have never verified claims that the shooter was either gay, visited gay bars, or was at all aware Pulse was a gay bar, Fox News reported.

The shooter's decision to target Pulse was seemingly last minute and may have been made due to the relatively absent security at the venue.

Ben Whedon is an editor and reporter for Just the News. Follow him on Twitter.