The man named in the lawsuit filed by Colorado web designer Lorie Smith as the individual who contacted her to build a website for a gay marriage claims he never attempted to contact Smith nor did he seek to have a website designed to celebrate his upcoming nuptials to his male partner because he was married at the time.  To a woman.

According to court filings, “Stewart”–the name of the person who allegedly contacted Smith’s firm, 303 Design, via email in September 2016–wanted a website designed to celebrate his upcoming wedding to his partner, “Mike.”  According to the New Republic, Stewart’s full name, contact information, and address were listed in the filing.  When New Republic reporter Melissa Gira Grant called the listed number, she reached a man named Stewart who was very confused.  (The outlet did not list the man’s last name to protect his privacy.)

“I wouldn’t want anybody to … make me a wedding website?” he said confused after the reporter told him he was the subject of the pending Supreme Court case. “I’m married [to a woman], I have a child—I’m not really sure where that came from? But somebody’s using false information in a Supreme Court filing document.”

There’s no law mandating that a case before the Supreme Court have an actual person harmed; the Court take can on hypotheticals:  the Court can opt to take a case if an alleged injury is deemed imminent should the law was applied, even if an actual injury didn’t occur.  That’s the case Smith’s lawyers made:  if she were forced to meet with the client and then turned him down, she would be in violation of the Colorado law, so her “injury” was imminent and justified the lawsuit.

However, if the New Republic reporting is accurate and there was no inquiry about a gay marriage website, then Smith and her lawyers not only committed fraud against the court, they repeatedly submitted knowingly false information to multiple courts to keep the lawsuit going.  That action may not invalidate the Supreme Court’s 6-3 decision released Friday, but it would put Smith and her lawyers in the crosshairs for perjury charges and potential professional discipline, not to mention a civil lawsuit from Stewart.

The larger issue, however, is one of conservatives having to manufacture crises in order to get their issues heard before this Supreme Court.  As with the ongoing case regarding birth control medications, conservatives hunt for incidents to be aggrieved about.  Yes, it’s true that plaintiffs in Constitutional law cases are frequently recruited rather than organically created; see Rosa Parks for more.  But the plaintiffs and the potential injury in those cases are both real.  Smith and her attorneys created her dilemma out of whole cloth.  Given that the facts of the case were created to meet the needs of conservatives, I also question the sincerity of the woman’s claim that she only objects to making websites for gay weddings because of her inaccurately-interpreted “christian” values–which incidentally are not supported by the teachings of Christ and which should have been thoroughly examined in trial, but weren’t addressed by the Supreme Court, taken instead “on faith.”