Title IV of the Higher Education Act of 1965 (Education Act) governs federal financial aid mechanisms, including student loans. 20 U. S. C. §1070(a). The Act authorizes the Secretary of Education to cancel or reduce loans in certain limited circumstances. The Secretary may cancel a set amount of loans held by some public servants, see §§1078–10, 1087j, 1087ee. He may also forgive the loans of borrowers who have died or become “permanently and totally disabled,” §1087(a)(1); borrowers who are bankrupt, §1087(b); and borrowers whose schools falsely certify them, close down, or fail to pay lenders. §1087(c).

   The issue presented in this case is whether the Secretary has authority under the Higher Education Relief Opportunities for Students Act of 2003 (HEROES Act) to depart from the existing provisions of the Education Act and establish a student loan forgiveness program that will cancel about $430 billion in debt principal and affect nearly all borrowers. Under the HEROES Act, the Secretary “may waive or modify any statutory or regulatory provision applicable to the student financial assistance programs under title IV of the [Education Act] as the Secretary deems necessary in connection with a war or other military operation or national emergency.” §1098bb(a)(1). As relevant here, the Secretary may issue such waivers or modifications only “as may be necessary to ensure” that “recipients of student financial assistance under title IV of the [Education Act affected by a national emergency] are not placed in a worse position financially in relation to that financial assistance because of [the national emergency].” §§1098bb(a)(2)(A), 1098ee(2)(C)–(D).

   In 2022, as the COVID–19 pandemic came to its end, the Secretary invoked the HEROES Act to issue “waivers and modifications” reducing or eliminating the federal student debt of most borrowers. Borrowers with eligible federal student loans who had an income below $125,000 in either 2020 or 2021 qualified for a loan balance discharge of up to $10,000. Those who previously received Pell Grants—a specific type of federal student loan based on financial need—qualified for a discharge of up to $20,000.

   Six States challenged the plan as exceeding the Secretary’s statutory authority. The Eighth Circuit issued a nationwide preliminary injunction, and this Court granted certiorari before judgment.

Held:

  1. At least Missouri has standing to challenge the Secretary’s program. Article III requires a plaintiff to have suffered an injury in fact—a concrete and imminent harm to a legally protected interest, like property or money—that is fairly traceable to the challenged conduct and likely to be redressed by the lawsuit. Lujan v. Defenders of Wildlife, 504 U. S. 555, 560–561. Here, as the Government concedes, the Secretary’s plan would cost MOHELA, a nonprofit government corporation created by Missouri to participate in the student loan market, an estimated $44 million a year in fees. MOHELA is, by law and function, an instrumentality of Missouri: Labeled an “instrumentality” by the State, it was created by the State, is supervised by the State, and serves a public function. The harm to MOHELA in the performance of its public function is necessarily a direct injury to Missouri itself. The Court reached a similar conclusion 70 years ago in Arkansas v. Texas, 346 U. S. 368.

  The Secretary emphasizes that, as a public corporation, MOHELA has a legal personality separate from the State. But such an instrumentality—created and supervised by the State to serve a public function—remains “(for many purposes at least) part of the Government itself.” Lebron v. National Railroad Passenger Corporation, 513 U. S. 374, 397. The Secretary also contends that because MOHELA can sue on its own behalf, it—not Missouri—must be the one to sue. But where a State has been harmed in carrying out its responsibilities, the fact that it chose to exercise its authority through a public corporation it created and controls does not bar the State from suing to remedy that harm itself. See Arkansas, 346 U. S. 368. With Article III satisfied, the Court need not consider the States’ other standing arguments. Pp. 7–12.

  2. The HEROES Act allows the Secretary to “waive or modify” existing statutory or regulatory provisions applicable to financial assistance programs under the Education Act, but does not allow the Secretary to rewrite that statute to the extent of canceling $430 billion of student loan principal. Pp. 12–26.

   (a) The text of the HEROES Act does not authorize the Secretary’s loan forgiveness program. The Secretary’s power under the Act to “modify” does not permit “basic and fundamental changes in the scheme” designed by Congress. MCI Telecommunications Corp. v. American Telephone & Telegraph Co., 512 U. S. 218, 225. Instead, “modify” carries “a connotation of increment or limitation,” and must be read to mean “to change moderately or in minor fashion.” Ibid. That is how the word is ordinarily used and defined, and the legal definition is no different.

  The authority to “modify” statutes and regulations allows the Secretary to make modest adjustments and additions to existing provisions, not transform them. Prior to the COVID–19 pandemic, “modifications” issued under the Act were minor and had limited effect. But the “modifications” challenged here create a novel and fundamentally different loan forgiveness program. While Congress specified in the Education Act a few narrowly delineated situations that could qualify a borrower for loan discharge, the Secretary has extended such discharge to nearly every borrower in the country. It is “highly unlikely that Congress” authorized such a sweeping loan cancellation program “through such a subtle device as permission to ‘modify.’ ” Id., at 231.

  The Secretary responds that the Act authorizes him to “waive” legal provisions as well as modify them—and that this additional term “grant[s] broader authority” than would “modify” alone. But the Secretary’s invocation of the waiver power here does not remotely resemble how it has been used on prior occasions, where it was simply used to nullify particular legal requirements. The Secretary next argues that the power to “waive or modify” is greater than the sum of its parts: Because waiver allows the Secretary “to eliminate legal obligations in their entirety,” the combination of “waive or modify” must allow him “to reduce them to any extent short of waiver” (even if the power to “modify” ordinarily does not stretch that far). But the challenged loan forgiveness program goes beyond even that. In essence, the Secretary has drafted a new section of the Education Act from scratch by “waiving” provisions root and branch and then filling the empty space with radically new text.

  The Secretary also cites a procedural provision in the HEROES Act directing the Secretary to publish a notice in the Federal Register, “includ[ing] the terms and conditions to be applied in lieu of such statutory and regulatory provisions” as the Secretary has waived or modified. §1098bb(b)(2). In the Government’s view, that language authorizes both “waiving and then putting [the Secretary’s] own requirements in”—a sort of “red penciling” of the existing law. But rather than implicitly granting the Secretary authority to draft new substantive statutory provisions at will, §1098bb(b)(2) simply imposes the obligation to report any waivers and modifications he has made. The Secretary’s ability to add new terms “in lieu of” the old is limited to his authority to “modify” existing law. As with any other modification issued under the Act, no new term or condition reported pursuant to §1098bb(b)(2) may distort the fundamental nature of the provision it alters.

  In sum, the Secretary’s comprehensive debt cancellation plan is not a waiver because it augments and expands existing provisions dramatically. It is not a modification because it constitutes “effectively the introduction of a whole new regime.” MCI, 512 U. S., at 234. And it cannot be some combination of the two, because when the Secretary seeks to add to existing law, the fact that he has “waived” certain provisions does not give him a free pass to avoid the limits inherent in the power to “modify.” However broad the meaning of “waive or modify,” that language cannot authorize the kind of exhaustive rewriting of the statute that has taken place here. Pp. 13–18.

   (b) The Secretary also appeals to congressional purpose, arguing that Congress intended “to grant substantial discretion to the Secretary to respond to unforeseen emergencies.” On this view, the unprecedented nature of the Secretary’s debt cancellation plan is justified by the pandemic’s unparalleled scope. But the question here is not whether something should be done; it is who has the authority to do it. As in the Court’s recent decision in West Virginia v. EPA, given the “ ‘history and the breadth of the authority’ ” asserted by the Executive and the “ ‘economic and political significance’ of that assertion,” the Court has “ ‘reason to hesitate before concluding that Congress’ meant to confer such authority.” 597 U. S. ___, ___ (quoting FDA v. Brown & Williamson Tobacco Corp., 529 U. S. 120, 159–160).

  This case implicates many of the factors present in past cases raising similar separation of powers concerns. The Secretary has never previously claimed powers of this magnitude under the HEROES Act; “[n]o regulation premised on” the HEROES Act “has even begun to approach the size or scope” of the Secretary’s program. Alabama Assn. of Realtors v. Department of Health and Human Servs., 594 U. S. ___, ___ (per curiam). The “ ‘economic and political significance’ ” of the Secretary’s action is staggering. West Virginia, 597 U. S., at ___ (quoting Brown & Williamson, 529 U. S., at 160). And the Secretary’s assertion of administrative authority has “conveniently enabled [him] to enact a program” that Congress has chosen not to enact itself. West Virginia, 597 U. S., at ___. The Secretary argues that the principles explained in West Virginia and its predecessors should not apply to cases involving government benefits. But major questions cases “have arisen from all corners of the administrative state,” id., at ___, and this is not the first such case to arise in the context of government benefits. See King v. Burwell, 576 U. S. 473, 485.

  All this leads the Court to conclude that “[t]he basic and consequential tradeoffs” inherent in a mass debt cancellation program “are ones that Congress would likely have intended for itself.” West Virginia, 597 U. S., at ___. In such circumstances, the Court has required the Secretary to “point to ‘clear congressional authorization’ ” to justify the challenged program. Id., at ___, ___ (quoting Utility Air Regulatory Group v. EPA, 573 U. S. 302, 324). And as explained, the HEROES Act provides no authorization for the Secretary’s plan when examined using the ordinary tools of statutory interpretation—let alone “clear congressional authorization” for such a program. Pp. 19–25.

Reversed and remanded.

 Roberts, C. J., delivered the opinion of the Court, in which Thomas, Alito, Gorsuch, Kavanaugh, and Barrett, JJ., joined. Barrett, J., filed a concurring opinion. Kagan, J., filed a dissenting opinion, in which Sotomayor and Jackson, JJ., joined.

To alleviate hardship expected to be caused by the impending resumption of federal student-loan repayments that had been suspended during the multi-year coronavirus pandemic, Secretary of Education Miguel Cardona announced a substantial student-loan debt-forgiveness plan (Plan). The Plan discharges $10,000 to $20,000 of an eligible borrower’s debt, depending on criteria such as the borrower’s income and the type of loan held. The Secretary invoked the Higher Education Relief Opportunities for Students Act of 2003 (HEROES Act), which authorizes the Secretary “to waive or modify any provision” applicable to federal “student financial assistance” programs “as may be necessary to ensure that . . . recipients of student financial assistance” are no worse off “financially in relation to that financial assistance because” of a national emergency or disaster. 20 U. S. C. §§1098bb(a)(1), (a)(2)(A), 1098ee(2)(C)–(D). The HEROES Act also exempts rules promulgated pursuant to it from the otherwise-applicable negotiated-rulemaking and notice-and-comment processes.

   Before the Plan took effect, various plaintiffs—including respondents here—sued to enjoin it. Respondents Myra Brown and Alexander Taylor are two borrowers who do not qualify for the maximum relief available under the Plan. Their one-count complaint alleges that the Secretary was required to follow notice-and-comment and negotiated-rulemaking procedures in promulgating the Plan, which all agree he did not do. Brown and Taylor argue that the HEROES Act’s procedural exemptions apply only when the rule promulgated is substantively authorized by the Act, and because the HEROES Act does not authorize the Plan (they argue), the Secretary was required to follow negotiated rulemaking and notice and comment. The District Court rejected their argument regarding the scope of the HEROES Act’s procedural exemptions, but nevertheless vacated the Plan as substantively unauthorized. This Court granted certiorari before judgment to consider this case alongside Biden v. Nebraska, No. 22–506, which presents a similar challenge to the Plan.

Held: Because respondents fail to establish that any injury they suffer from not having their loans forgiven is fairly traceable to the Plan, they lack Article III standing, so the Court has no jurisdiction to address their procedural claim. Pp. 6–15.

  (a) “This case begins and ends with standing.” Carney v. Adams, 592 U. S. ___, ___. The Court’s authority under the Constitution is limited to resolving “Cases” or “Controversies.” Art. III, §2. The Court’s jurisprudence has “established that the irreducible constitutional minimum of standing contains three elements” that a plaintiff must plead and—ultimately—prove. Lujan v. Defenders of Wildlife, 504 U. S. 555, 560. Those elements are: (1) a “concrete and particularized” injury that is (2) “fairly traceable” to the challenged action of the defendant and (3) “likely” to be “redressed by a favorable decision.” Id., at 560–561 (alterations and internal quotation marks omitted). But where, as here, the plaintiff alleges that she has been deprived of a procedural right to protect her concrete interest, she need not show that observing the contested procedure would necessarily lead to a different substantive result. Id., at 572, n. 7. Pp. 6–8.

  (b) As articulated in this Court, respondents’ claim and theory of standing are twofold: First, because the HEROES Act does not substantively authorize the Plan, the Secretary was obligated to follow typical negotiated-rulemaking and notice-and-comment requirements. Second, if the Secretary had observed those procedures, respondents might have used those opportunities to convince him not only that proceeding under the HEROES Act is unlawful, but also that he should instead adopt a different loan-forgiveness program under the Higher Education Act of 1965 (HEA), and to make that program more generous to respondents than the Plan. Respondents assert there is at least a chance that this series of events will come to pass now if this Court vacates the Plan. Pp. 8–9.

  (c) Respondents’ standing claim most clearly fails on traceability: They cannot show that their purported injury of not receiving loan relief under the HEA is fairly traceable to the Department’s (allegedly unlawful) decision to grant loan relief under the HEROES Act. Pp. 9–15.

   (1) Significantly, respondents are not claiming that they are injured by not being sufficiently included among the Plan’s beneficiaries: They think the Plan is substantively unlawful and instead seek debt forgiveness under the HEA. But a decision regarding the lawfulness of the Plan does not directly affect respondents’ ability to obtain loan relief under the HEA; the Department’s authority to grant loan relief under the HEA (upon which the Court does not pass) is not affected by whether the Plan is lawful or unlawful. Any connection between loan forgiveness under the two statutes is speculative.

  While it is true that the Court’s procedural-standing case law tolerates uncertainty over whether observing certain procedures would have led to (caused) a different substantive outcome, see Lujan, 504 U. S., at 572, n. 7, the causal uncertainty here is not so limited. Instead, the uncertainty concerns whether the substantive decisions the Department has made regarding the Plan under the HEROES Act have a causal relationship with other substantive decisions respondents want the Department to make under the HEA. There is no precedent for tolerating this sort of causal uncertainty. Respondents cannot show that the denial of HEA loan relief—their ostensible injury—“fairly can be traced to” the Department’s decision to grant loan relief in the Plan. Simon v. Eastern Ky. Welfare Rights Organization, 426 U. S. 26, 42–43. There is little reason to think that the Department’s discretionary decision to pursue one mechanism of loan relief under the HEROES Act has anything to do with its discretionary decision to pursue (or not pursue) action under the HEA. “The line of causation between” the Department’s promulgation of the Plan and respondents’ lack of benefits under the HEA “is attenuated at best,” Allen v. Wright, 468 U. S. 737, 757, and all too dependent on “ ‘conjecture,’ ” Summers v. Earth Island Institute, 555 U. S. 488, 496. Pp. 10–13.

   (2) Respondents’ attempts to tie the Plan to potential HEA relief are unavailing. Although the Department has occasionally referred to “one-time” student-loan relief in publicizing the Plan, the Plan itself contains no such reference. And any incidental effect of the Plan on the likelihood that the Department will undertake a separate loan- forgiveness program under a different statute is too weak and speculative to show that the absence of HEA-based loan forgiveness is fairly traceable to the Plan. See, e.g., Simon, 426 U. S., at 42–43. To the extent the Department has determined that the Plan crowds out other efforts to forgive student loans, that determination is a discretionary one that respondents may petition the Department to reconsider. Finally, respondents cannot demonstrate causation on the theory that the Department’s failure to observe the requisite procedural rules cost them a chance to obtain debt forgiveness; they do not want debt forgiveness under the HEROES Act, and nothing the Department has done deprives them of a chance to seek debt forgiveness under the HEA. Respondents cannot meaningfully connect the absence of loan relief under the HEA to the adoption of the Plan, so they have failed to show that their injury is fairly traceable to the Plan. Pp. 13–14.

Vacated and remanded.

 Alito, J., delivered the opinion for a unanimous Court.

Lorie Smith wants to expand her graphic design business, 303 Creative LLC, to include services for couples seeking wedding websites. But Ms. Smith worries that Colorado will use the Colorado Anti-Discrimination Act to compel her—in violation of the First Amendment—to create websites celebrating marriages she does not endorse. To clarify her rights, Ms. Smith filed a lawsuit seeking an injunction to prevent the State from forcing her to create websites celebrating marriages that defy her belief that marriage should be reserved to unions between one man and one woman.

   CADA prohibits all “public accommodations” from denying “the full and equal enjoyment” of its goods and services to any customer based on his race, creed, disability, sexual orientation, or other statutorily enumerated trait. Colo. Rev. Stat. §24–34–601(2)(a). The law defines “public accommodation” broadly to include almost every public-facing business in the State. §24–34–601(1). Either state officials or private citizens may bring actions to enforce the law. §§24–34–306, 24–34–602(1). And a variety of penalties can follow any violation.

   Before the district court, Ms. Smith and the State stipulated to a number of facts: Ms. Smith is “willing to work with all people regardless of classifications such as race, creed, sexual orientation, and gender” and “will gladly create custom graphics and websites” for clients of any sexual orientation; she will not produce content that “contradicts biblical truth” regardless of who orders it; Ms. Smith’s belief that marriage is a union between one man and one woman is a sincerely held conviction; Ms. Smith provides design services that are “expressive” and her “original, customized” creations “contribut[e] to the overall message” her business conveys “through the websites” it creates; the wedding websites she plans to create “will be expressive in nature,” will be “customized and tailored” through close collaboration with individual couples, and will “express Ms. Smith’s and 303 Creative’s message celebrating and promoting” her view of marriage; viewers of Ms. Smith’s websites “will know that the websites are her original artwork;” and “[t]here are numerous companies in the State of Colorado and across the nation that offer custom website design services.”

   Ultimately, the district court held that Ms. Smith was not entitled to the injunction she sought, and the Tenth Circuit affirmed.

Held: The First Amendment prohibits Colorado from forcing a website designer to create expressive designs speaking messages with which the designer disagrees. Pp. 6–26.

  (a) The framers designed the Free Speech Clause of the First Amendment to protect the “freedom to think as you will and to speak as you think.” Boy Scouts of America v. Dale, 530 U. S. 640, 660–661 (internal quotation marks omitted). The freedom to speak is among our inalienable rights. The freedom of thought and speech is “indispensable to the discovery and spread of political truth.” Whitney v. California, 274 U. S. 357, 375 (Brandeis, J., concurring). For these reasons, “[i]f there is any fixed star in our constitutional constellation,” West Virginia Bd. of Ed. v. Barnette, 319 U. S. 624, 642, it is the principle that the government may not interfere with “an uninhibited marketplace of ideas,” McCullen v. Coakley, 573 U. S. 464, 476 (internal quotation marks omitted).

  This Court has previously faced cases where governments have sought to test these foundational principles. In Barnette, the Court held that the State of West Virginia’s efforts to compel schoolchildren to salute the Nation’s flag and recite the Pledge of Allegiance “invad[ed] the sphere of intellect and spirit which it is the purpose of the First Amendment . . . to reserve from all official control.” 319 U. S., at 642. State authorities had “transcend[ed] constitutional limitations on their powers.” 319 U. S., at 642. In Hurley v. Irish-American Gay, Lesbian and Bisexual Group of Boston, Inc., 515 U. S. 557, the Court held that Massachusetts’s public accommodations statute could not be used to force veterans organizing a parade in Boston to include a group of gay, lesbian, and bisexual individuals because the parade was protected speech, and requiring the veterans to include voices they wished to exclude would impermissibly require them to “alter the expressive content of their parade.” Id., at 572–573. And in Boy Scouts of America v. Dale, when the Boy Scouts sought to exclude assistant scoutmaster James Dale from membership after learning he was gay, the Court held the Boy Scouts to be “an expressive association” entitled to First Amendment protection. 530 U. S., at 656. The Court found that forcing the Scouts to include Mr. Dale would undoubtedly “interfere with [its] choice not to propound a point of view contrary to its beliefs.” Id., at 654.

  These cases illustrate that the First Amendment protects an individual’s right to speak his mind regardless of whether the government considers his speech sensible and well intentioned or deeply “misguided,” Hurley, 515 U. S., at 574, and likely to cause “anguish” or “incalculable grief,” Snyder v. Phelps, 562 U. S. 443, 456. Generally, too, the government may not compel a person to speak its own preferred messages. See Tinker v. Des Moines Independent Community School Dist., 393 U. S. 503, 505. Pp. 6–9.

  (b) Applying these principles to the parties’ stipulated facts, the Court agrees with the Tenth Circuit that the wedding websites Ms. Smith seeks to create qualify as pure speech protected by the First Amendment under this Court’s precedents. Ms. Smith’s websites will express and communicate ideas—namely, those that “celebrate and promote the couple’s wedding and unique love story” and those that “celebrat[e] and promot[e]” what Ms. Smith understands to be a marriage. Speech conveyed over the internet, like all other manner of speech, qualifies for the First Amendment’s protections. And the Court agrees with the Tenth Circuit that the wedding websites Ms. Smith seeks to create involve her speech, a conclusion supported by the parties’ stipulations, including that Ms. Smith intends to produce a final story for each couple using her own words and original artwork. While Ms. Smith’s speech may combine with the couple’s in a final product, an individual “does not forfeit constitutional protection simply by combining multifarious voices” in a single communication. Hurley, 515 U. S., at 569.

  Ms. Smith seeks to engage in protected First Amendment speech; Colorado seeks to compel speech she does not wish to provide. As the Tenth Circuit observed, if Ms. Smith offers wedding websites celebrating marriages she endorses, the State intends to compel her to create custom websites celebrating other marriages she does not. 6 F. 4th 1160, 1178. Colorado seeks to compel this speech in order to “excis[e] certain ideas or viewpoints from the public dialogue.” Turner Broadcasting System, Inc. v. FCC, 512 U. S. 633, 642. Indeed, the Tenth Circuit recognized that the coercive “[e]liminati[on]” of dissenting ideas about marriage constitutes Colorado’s “very purpose” in seeking to apply its law to Ms. Smith. 6 F. 4th, at 1178. But while the Tenth Circuit thought that Colorado could compel speech from Ms. Smith consistent with the Constitution, this Court’s First Amendment precedents teach otherwise. In Hurley, Dale, and Barnette, the Court found that governments impermissibly compelled speech in violation of the First Amendment when they tried to force speakers to accept a message with which they disagreed. Here, Colorado seeks to put Ms. Smith to a similar choice. If she wishes to speak, she must either speak as the State demands or face sanctions for expressing her own beliefs, sanctions that may include compulsory participation in “remedial . . . training,” filing periodic compliance reports, and paying monetary fines. That is an impermissible abridgement of the First Amendment’s right to speak freely. Hurley, 515 U. S., at 574.

  Under Colorado’s logic, the government may compel anyone who speaks for pay on a given topic to accept all commissions on that same topic—no matter the message—if the topic somehow implicates a customer’s statutorily protected trait. 6 F. 4th, at 1199 (Tymkovich, C. J., dissenting). Taken seriously, that principle would allow the government to force all manner of artists, speechwriters, and others whose services involve speech to speak what they do not believe on pain of penalty. The Court’s precedents recognize the First Amendment tolerates none of that. To be sure, public accommodations laws play a vital role in realizing the civil rights of all Americans, and governments in this country have a “compelling interest” in eliminating discrimination in places of public accommodation. Roberts v. United States Jaycees, 468 U. S. 609, 628. This Court has recognized that public accommodations laws “vindicate the deprivation of personal dignity that surely accompanies denials of equal access to public establishments.” Heart of Atlanta Motel, Inc. v. United States, 379 U. S. 241, 250 (internal quotation marks omitted). Over time, governments in this country have expanded public accommodations laws in notable ways. Statutes like Colorado’s grow from nondiscrimination rules the common law sometimes imposed on common carriers and places of traditional public accommodation like hotels and restaurants. Dale, 530 U. S., at 656–657. Often, these enterprises exercised something like monopoly power or hosted or transported others or their belongings. See, e.g., Liverpool & Great Western Steam Co. v. Phenix Ins. Co., 129 U. S. 397, 437. Importantly, States have also expanded their laws to prohibit more forms of discrimination. Today, for example, approximately half the States have laws like Colorado’s that expressly prohibit discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation. The Court has recognized this is “unexceptional.” Masterpiece Cakeshop, Ltd. v. Colorado Civil Rights Comm’n, 584 U. S. ___, ___. States may “protect gay persons, just as [they] can protect other classes of individuals, in acquiring whatever products and services they choose on the same terms and conditions as are offered to other members of the public. And there are no doubt innumerable goods and services that no one could argue implicate the First Amendment.” Ibid. At the same time, this Court has also long recognized that no public accommodations law is immune from the demands of the Constitution. In particular, this Court has held, public accommodations statutes can sweep too broadly when deployed to compel speech. See, e.g., Hurley, 515 U. S., at 571, 578; Dale, 530 U. S., at 659. As in those cases, when Colorado’s public accommodations law and the Constitution collide, there can be no question which must prevail. U. S. Const. Art. VI, §2.

  As the Tenth Circuit saw it, Colorado has a compelling interest in ensuring “equal access to publicly available goods and services,” and no option short of coercing speech from Ms. Smith can satisfy that interest because she plans to offer “unique services” that are, “by definition, unavailable elsewhere.” 6 F. 4th, at 1179–1180 (internal quotation marks omitted). In some sense, of course, her voice is unique; so is everyone’s. But that hardly means a State may coopt an individual’s voice for its own purposes. The speaker in Hurley had an “enviable” outlet for speech, and the Boy Scouts in Dale offered an arguably unique experience, but in both cases this Court held that the State could not use its public accommodations statute to deny a speaker the right “to choose the content of his own message.” Hurley, 515 U. S., at 573; see Dale, 530 U. S., at 650–656. A rule otherwise would conscript any unique voice to disseminate the government’s preferred messages in violation of the First Amendment. Pp. 9–15.

  (c) Colorado now seems to acknowledge that the First Amendment does prohibit it from coercing Ms. Smith to create websites expressing any message with which she disagrees. Alternatively, Colorado contends, Ms. Smith must simply provide the same commercial product to all, which she can do by repurposing websites celebrating marriages she does endorse for marriages she does not. Colorado’s theory rests on a belief that this case does not implicate pure speech, but rather the sale of an ordinary commercial product, and that any burden on Ms. Smith’s speech is purely “incidental.” On the State’s telling, then, speech more or less vanishes from the picture—and, with it, any need for First Amendment scrutiny. Colorado’s alternative theory, however, does not sit easily with its stipulation that Ms. Smith does not seek to sell an ordinary commercial good but intends to create “customized and tailored” expressive speech for each couple “to celebrate and promote the couple’s wedding and unique love story.” Colorado seeks to compel just the sort of speech that it tacitly concedes lies beyond its reach.

  The State stresses that Ms. Smith offers her speech for pay and does so through 303 Creative LLC, a company in which she is “the sole member-owner.” But many of the world’s great works of literature and art were created with an expectation of compensation. And speakers do not shed their First Amendment protections by employing the corporate form to disseminate their speech. Colorado urges the Court to look at the reason Ms. Smith refuses to offer the speech it seeks to compel, and it claims that the reason is that she objects to the “protected characteristics” of certain customers. But the parties’ stipula tions state, to the contrary, that Ms. Smith will gladly conduct business with those having protected characteristics so long as the custom graphics and websites she is asked to create do not violate her beliefs. Ms. Smith stresses that she does not create expressions that defy any of her beliefs for any customer, whether that involves encouraging violence, demeaning another person, or promoting views inconsistent with her religious commitments.

  The First Amendment’s protections belong to all, not just to speakers whose motives the government finds worthy. In this case, Colorado seeks to force an individual to speak in ways that align with its views but defy her conscience about a matter of major significance. In the past, other States in Barnette, Hurley, and Dale have similarly tested the First Amendment’s boundaries by seeking to compel speech they thought vital at the time. But abiding the Constitution’s commitment to the freedom of speech means all will encounter ideas that are “misguided, or even hurtful.” Hurley, 515 U. S., at 574. Consistent with the First Amendment, the Nation’s answer is tolerance, not coercion. The First Amendment envisions the United States as a rich and complex place where all persons are free to think and speak as they wish, not as the government demands. Colorado cannot deny that promise consistent with the First Amendment. Pp. 15–19, 24–25.

6 F. 4th 1160, reversed.

 Gorsuch, J., delivered the opinion of the Court, in which Roberts, C. J., and Thomas, Alito, Kavanaugh, and Barrett, JJ., joined. Sotomayor, J., filed a dissenting opinion, in which Kagan and Jackson, JJ., joined.