'Stewart' says he never asked Christian web designer to create gay wedding invitations in Supreme Court case

DENVER - A Colorado web designer who the U.S. Supreme Court ruled Friday could refuse to make wedding websites for gay couples cited a request from a man named Stewart, who confirmed to media outlets including KTVU, that he never asked to work with her. 

Stewart's request wasn't the basis for the federal lawsuit filed preemptively seven years ago by web designer Lorie Smith, before she started making wedding websites. 

But as the case advanced, it was referenced by her attorneys in 2017 when lawyers for the state of Colorado pressed Smith on whether she had sufficient grounds to sue.

Smith named Stewart — and included a website service request from him, listing his 415-area phone number and email address in 2017 court documents. But Stewart – who doesn't want his last name used for fear of harassment – said he never submitted the request and didn't know his name was invoked in the lawsuit until he was contacted this week by a reporter from The New Republic, which broke the story. 

Also, at the time, Stewart was married to a woman and living in the San Francisco Bay Area, the New Republic reported. 

"If somebody’s pulled my information, as some kind of supporting information or documentation, somebody’s falsified that," Stewart explained to the New Republic.

Stewart added that he does not like how the Supreme Court ruled at all: "I disagree with this, in the strongest possible terms. I couldn’t disagree with her stance more."

He added that he was a designer and "could design my own website if I need to" — and was concerned no one had checked into the validity of the request cited by Smith until recently.

Smith's lawyer, Kristen Waggoner, said at a Friday news conference that the wedding request naming Stewart was submitted through Smith's website and denied it was fabricated.

She suggested it could have been a troll making the request, something that's happened with other clients she has represented. In 2018 her client Colorado baker Jack Phillips won a partial U.S. Supreme Court victory after refusing to make a gay couple's wedding cake, citing his Christian faith.

"It's undisputed that the request was received," Waggoner said. "Whether that was a troll and not a genuine request, or it was someone who was looking for that, is really irrelevant to the case."

Colorado Attorney General Phil Weiser on Friday called the lawsuit a "made up case" because Smith wasn't offering wedding website services when the suit was filed.

Weiser didn't know the specifics of Stewart's denial, but said the nation's high court should not have addressed the lawsuit's merits "without any basis in reality."

About a month after the case was filed in federal court challenging an anti-discrimination law in Colorado, lawyers for the state said Smith had not been harmed by the law as they moved to dismiss the case.

Her lawyers maintained Smith did not have to be punished for violating the law before challenging it. In February 2017 they said even though she did not need a request in order to pursue the case, she had received one.

"Any claim that Lorie will never receive a request to create a custom website celebrating a same-sex ceremony is no longer legitimate because Lorie has received such a request," they said.

Smith's Supreme Court filings briefly mentioned she received at least one request to create a website celebrating the wedding of a same-sex couple. There did not appear to be any reference to the issue in the court's decision.

KTVU contributed to this report.