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Documenting Denial: A Record of Rejection Faced by Gay Couples
Over the past two decades, scores of business owners across the nation have sought to refuse services for same-sex weddings, an SMU Law School study finds
Of course you know about the website designer who didn't want to create sites for gay weddings. You probably remember the Colorado baker who declined to make a custom wedding cake for a gay couple. Perhaps you even recall the New Mexico photographers who refused to take pictures of a lesbian commitment ceremony.
But did you know about the stylist in Tennessee who refused to cut hair or apply makeup to the women in a wedding party for two men? Or the instructor in Missouri who spurned two grooms seeking dance lessons for their ceremony because it "would make everyone else in the room uncomfortable"? It's unlikely you've heard about the North Carolina trolley company that turned down, on religious grounds, a request to transport a gay couple to their wedding ceremony in a remote mountainous location.
For the past five years, with the invaluable help of my research assistants at SMU Dedman School of Law, I've been collecting all publicly known stories of same-sex couples who were denied wedding goods or services by private business owners that object to gay marriage. The compendium of cases is collected in a new website called, Documenting Denial: A Record of Wedding Services Denied to Same-Sex Couples Since 2004. As best I can tell, this is the first published attempt to compile such a record.
I. What is the Project?
On the website, the project is described as follows:
In 2023, the Supreme Court of the United States held in 303 Creative v. Elenis that Colorado could not compel a website designer to create wedding websites for same-sex couples. The 6-3 majority reasoned that forcing a designer to create messages with which she disagrees would violate her First Amendment right to freedom of speech. The decision marked the first time the Court ruled that a for-profit business in the public marketplace could be exempt from the requirement to serve customers protected from discrimination by state law.
Twenty years earlier, in Goodridge v. Department of Public Health (2003), the Massachusetts state supreme court became the first in the country to declare laws against same-sex marriage unconstitutional. By 2004, the first official marriage licenses in the United States were being issued to gay and lesbian couples. Other states followed, although most states resisted. In Obergefell v. Hodges (2015), the Supreme Court recognized a federal constitutional right of same-sex couples to wed. Today, the number of same-sex marriages in the U.S. approaches one million.
Some of these couples have faced rejection from vendors when seeking goods and services related to their weddings or commitment ceremonies. Vendors have declined flowers, photography, wedding cakes, venues, tailoring, and more based on their personal and religious beliefs that marriage should not include same-sex couples.
The scope of the project
Our project is an attempt to document all publicly known examples of these denials. By "publicly known," we mean those denials accessible to the public through online media sources and public records of litigation. Our list also includes preemptive lawsuits filed by business owners seeking to establish or to clarify their right to refuse goods and services. In almost every instance we've listed, it is undisputed that a wedding-related service or good was actually denied. The claimed basis for the denial, the vendor's objection to same-sex marriage, is also almost always undisputed.
The record covers the period since 2004, the year that the first legal same-sex marriages began in the United States. It includes only denials by vendors in the business of providing such goods or services, not denials by judges or religious leaders refusing to officiate or by state officials refusing to issue marriage licenses. The record compiled here includes both denials that resulted in litigation and those that did not.
As part of the record, we want readers to know the who, what, where, when, and why of these denials. Accordingly, we offer a factual summary of the denial, the names of the parties involved on both sides, the locations and dates of each controversy, the particular product or service involved, whether litigation ensued, and the outcome. Links to relevant public records, like newspaper accounts and court opinions, are provided.
For a more visual experience of the scope and extent of the record, we have prepared a map showing the spread of denials across the nation and across the decades.
Finally, we invite readers to send us corrections and additions.
In essence, there are two ways to view the compilation of denial cases. One is by going to a chart (which we call the "Record") that gives detailed information about each case: a synopsis of the facts, the location and date of the denial or initial lawsuit filing, the type of wedding service or good involved, the names of the parties (both customers and business owners), the reason for the denial (religious, personal, or other), information about subsequent litigation (if any), and links to news articles or court opinions about the case. A color-coding scheme allows you to see quickly which of the listed denials resulted in litigation (pink), which of the denials resulted in no litigation (green), and which involved pre-enforcement actions by businesses where no actual denial occurred (blue).
The other way to view the compilation of cases is to peruse an interactive Map that allows you to click on the various locations in the country or to scroll through the cases chronologically. The Map is a good way to get an overview of the cases. You can then go the Record to find more detailed information about each case.
II. What We Found
In all, since Massachusetts became the first state to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples in 2004, we found 64 cases of private businesses declining, or seeking to decline, goods or services for gay weddings or similar events (e.g., a commitment ceremony or a renewal of vows). Ten of those 64 cases involved businesses filing preemptive lawsuits to clarify or establish their legal right to refuse such services, although no actual denial had yet occurred.
Thus, we found 54 denials that have actually occurred since 2004 ("actual denial cases"). In 52 of the 54 cases, there was apparently no dispute between the customers and the business about whether there was a denial or about whether the basis for the denial was an objection to same-sex marriage.
As you'll see from the Map, the cases are spread out geographically. They stretch from east to west, north to south, and everywhere in between. They appear in big cities, small towns, and rural areas. The first case we could find in the public record--the New Mexico photographers who refused to take pictures of a lesbian couple's commitment ceremony--arose in 2006. The most recent came in November 2024. There are no significant trends in the frequency of denials over time. Four cases have arisen since the Supreme Court's decision in 303 Creative v. Elenis (2023). Only one of those is being litigated.
Of the 54 actual denial cases, 39 (72%) involved no lawsuit. In most of these 39 unlitigated cases, there was no relevant legal protection for same-sex couples available in the particular jurisdiction. Fifteen actual denial cases (28%) resulted in litigation.
What types of good or services have been the subject of these denials? By far the most common site for disputes has been the wedding venues themselves: 26 of the 64 overall cases (41%) have involved business owners refusing to rent their spaces for same-sex weddings. This is followed by disputes with wedding cake bakers (10), photographers (7), videographers (4), dressmakers and tuxedo makers (4), florists (2), caterers (2), wedding planners (2), and one each for a newspaper refusing same-sex wedding announcements, a calligrapher, a hairstylist, a dance instructor, a trolley operator, and the celebrated website designer who was the subject of 303 Creative.
What was the stated basis for denying wedding services to same-sex couples? The vast majority of business owners, 54 out of 64 overall cases (84%), cited religious beliefs as their primary objection to same-sex marriage. Most of these religious objectors were self-described Christians. The remaining ten business owners characterized their opposition as personal or legal, or did not specify a reason.
III. Why the Record Matters
Here's what we said on this topic at the Documenting Denials website:
Marriage is an important milestone in a person's life. It helps cement relationships, meets needs, and reflects religious and personal values. Its meaning matters to almost everyone—the couple, their children, their families, their friends, their faiths, and their societies. Participating in and supporting the wedding itself is an act loaded with significance for everyone.
It's no wonder that people on both sides have claimed strong interests for their respective positions. Same-sex couples want equal access to wedding services in the open marketplace and equal treatment from the vendors they select. They also do not want to be insulted at this uniquely sensitive and anxiety-laden time. Wedding vendors with religious or other objections to same-sex marriage want to run their businesses without violating their consciences and want to preserve their freedoms of speech and religion.
Knowing the number, locations, dates, and outcomes of actual denials helps to inform the debate about the significance and extent of the claims on each side. The record will help inform the public, attorneys, judges, and scholars about the kinds of services that are most often denied.
From the exchange of rings to the tossing of the bouquet, symbolism pervades almost every aspect of a wedding. But these are usually thought of as the expressions of the couple, not of the ringmaker or the florist. The Supreme Court declared in 303 Creative that, at least in some cases, providing the good or service amounts to expression by the business, which cannot be compelled by state law. Recounting the circumstances and context of actual cases may help sharpen the questions and settle the answers of what services or goods are sufficiently part of the wedding vendor's own expression to merit constitutional protection.
We shouldn't lose sight of the real people involved in these cases. The stakes were high for the couples who were denied services. Even if they obtained the services elsewhere--and it appears that in all or almost all cases they did--they bore the anxiety, time, and expense of having to do so. And they were figuratively slapped in the face at what should have been a joyous time in their lives.
The stakes were also high in these cases for the objecting business owners. They had the choice of either serving the weddings and foregoing their convictions or denying the services and dealing with the fallout. Public pressure forced some of them out of business. Others had to defend themselves in court, and some of these ended up losing. Even if they prevailed, courts dragged out their cases. One Oregon baker who declined a wedding cake for a lesbian couple in January 2013 (when Barack Obama was beginning his second term) is still awaiting final word from the Oregon courts more than 12 years later. Even then the case will probably go back to the U.S. Supreme Court for possible review a second time. It's now zombie litigation: the bakery closed in 2016.
At the same time, it's important to keep the record in perspective. We found 54 actual denial cases over a 20-year time span, fewer than three per year on average. That may seem like a lot compared to the mere handful of cases most people have heard about. But consider that, at the upper range, Gallup estimated there were 930,000 same-sex marriages in the U.S. as of June 2025. At the lower end of the range, the Williams Institute at UCLA estimated there were 823,000 married same-sex couples in the United States as of June 2025.
Given those numbers, it's a safe bet that there have been close to one million same-sex marriages performed in the United States since 2004. Of course, not all of these married couples held weddings at which commercial services or goods were needed or desired.
By any reasonable reckoning, the 54 publicly known cases of actual service denials that we found are likely a tiny fraction of the total number of weddings at which gay couples called on service providers for venues, cakes, photographs, flowers, and other products from the innumerable professionals who make weddings their business. Many of these couples self-selected their providers, opting for those they knew to be open to gay couples. But the logical inference from these numbers is that the vast majority of gay couples and wedding businesses have had no difficulty engaging in these particular commercial exchanges. Markets tend to value profit over identity or moral judgment.
IV. Limitations and ongoing efforts
With that perspective in mind, it's also important to highlight some limitations of this study. We aim to catalogue only publicly known instances of wedding-service denials. Again, by "publicly known," we mean those denials accessible to the public through online media sources (like newspapers and social-media sites) and public records of litigation.
There are doubtless many cases of actual denial where the rejection never surfaced publicly. It's possible the cases we've collected are the tip of an iceberg. Short of conducting broad surveys or doing other research, our review could not capture these private acts of denial. It also cannot capture the full impact of discrimination in the wedding-service industry, which would include cases where gay couples altogether avoid a provider because they fear rejection or cases where providers hide the true reason for denials.
This project is ongoing. We will update Documenting Denial as needed. To that end, we invite readers to send corrections and additions to: documentingdenial@smu.edu. If making suggestions for additional cases that should be added, please send links or other documentation supporting the additions.
Finally, I want to thank the following SMU Law students who gave countless hours and boundless devotion to this project over the past five years: Jaishal Dhimar, Sarah Fisher, Emily Fletcher, Ryan Fulghum, Lauren Jasiak, Kaci Jones, and Sarah Starr. Their excellent work will continue to inform this controversy long past their law school graduations.
