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Civil rights groups and Democrats reacted angrily to the US supreme court decision in favor of the Colorado web designer Lorie Smith, who argued she had a first amendment right to refuse to provide services for same-sex marriages. Critics of the court’s decision say it ushers in a new era of prejudice in America.

“This ruling on LGBTQ+ rights by the Maga-right activist wing of the supreme court is a giant step backward for human rights and equal protection in America,” said the Democratic Senate majority leader, Chuck Schumer, in a statement. “We will continue to fight to ensure that all Americans, including LGBTQ+ Americans, have equal protection under the law.”

The progressive Democratic congresswoman Rashida Tlaib called for term limits of justices on the conservative-dominated supreme court which has now ushered in a series of decisions rolling back well-established rights, such as overturning federal protections on abortion and affirmative action.

“End lifetime appointments for supreme court justices. Enforce a binding code of ethics. Expand the court,” Tlaib posted on Twitter.

The New York congressman Ritchie Torres said: “Scotus invokes religious liberty to license discrimination against LGBTQ people. The LGBTQ community might be the first victim of the supreme court’s decision but it won’t be the last. Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.”

Civil rights groups were also vocal in their shock and warned of the impact on LGTBQ+ communities across the US who see it as opening the way for people and businesses to legally refuse services to LGBTQ+ people.

“This decision will have a devastating ripple effect across the country by creating a permission structure, backed by the force of law, to discriminate and endanger LGBTQ+ people and trans youth who are already so at risk,” said the Rev Paul Brandeis Raushenbush, president and chief executive of the Interfaith Alliance.

“Discrimination under the guise of religious freedom is not just unconstitutional, but antithetical to our values,” added Darcy Hirsh, director of policy and advocacy at the group. “Just as people are free to explore matters of faith and personal conscience, people should also be free to express their sexual orientation and gender identity without fear of discrimination or harm.”

The Human Rights Campaign, one of America’s largest LGBTQ advocacy organizations, called the ruling in the case, known as 303 Creative LLC v Elenis, “unprecedented” and a decision that “will have sweeping and harmful impacts on the LGBTQ+ community and is a dangerous step backwards”.

“Our nation has been on a path of progress – deciding over the course of many decades that businesses should be open regardless of race, disability or religion. People deserve to have commercial spaces that are safe and welcoming,” said the organisation’s president, Kelley Robinson, in a statement.

But the Republican former vice-president Mike Pence, who is running for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination and popular with rightwing evangelicals, praised the court’s decision.

“Religious freedom is the bedrock of our constitution,” he said, “and today’s decision reminds us that we must elect leaders who will defend that right and appoint judges who support religious freedom.”

Kristin Waggoner with Alliance Defending Freedom, the group that brought Smith’s case, said the court had “rightly reaffirmed that the government can’t force Americans to say things they don’t believe”.

In a six to three vote, split down ideological lines, the highest court ruled that the first amendment prohibits Colorado from forcing the website designer to create expressive designs with which the designer disagreed.

In the majority opinion, Justice Neil Gorsuch wrote that the free speech amendment in the constitution “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”.

Gorsuch also invoked George Orwell, writing that “if liberty means anything at all, it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear”.

The liberal justice Sonia Sotomayor responded to Gorsuch, writing that “the majority’s repeated invocation of this Orwellian thought policing is revealing of just how much it misunderstands this case”.