Court backs baker on gay wedding cake
Limited ruling avoids key question but may spur efforts for new laws.
The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday sided with a Christian baker in Colorado who refused to sell a wedding cake to a gay couple, but the limited ruling avoided the central question in the case: where to draw the line between religious belief and tolerance for same-sex relationships.
The ruling opens the door for similar cases that are already in the Supreme Court pipeline and promises to spur social conservatives to renew the fight to expand religious liberty exemptions when the Texas Legislature convenes in January.
Jack Phillips, an expert baker in suburban Denver, argued that he should not be required to provide wedding cakes to same-sex couples because his faith does not allow him to participate in gay marriages.
Monday’s 7-2 ruling, however, focused on how Phillips was treated by the Colorado Civil Rights Commission when it determined that he broke the state’s anti-discrimination law by refusing to sell wedding cakes to samesex couples that he would have sold to heterosexual couples.
“Phillips was entitled to a neutral decision maker who would give full and fair consideration to his religious objection,” Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote for
the majority.
Instead, the owner of Masterpiece Cakeshop was subjected to “clear and impermissible hostility toward the sincere religious beliefs motivating his objection” when some of the commissioners disparaged Phillips’ faith as despicable and compared his beliefs to defenses of slavery and the Holocaust, Kennedy said.
In voiding rulings that found Phillips had broken Colorado law, Kennedy acknowledged that other cases will have to determine whether the refusal to serve same-sex couples amounts to impermissible discrimination or is allowed by constitutional protections for religious practice.
Kennedy sought to set out the ground rules for those future disputes, saying they “must be resolved with tolerance, without undue disrespect to sincere religious beliefs, and without subjecting gay persons to indignities when they seek goods and services in an open market.”
The Supreme Court also declined to address Phillips’ argument that he had a free-speech right to refuse to design cakes for same-sex couples, though in a concurring opinion, Justices Clarence Thomas and Neil Gorsuch said they believed Phillips had a right not to be forced to express support for gay marriage by designing wedding cakes for samesex couples.
Praise, disappointment
Religious and social conservatives praised Monday’s ruling for recognizing that sincere religious beliefs deserve protection.
“This is a landmark victory for our first liberties of religious freedom and freedom of speech,” Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton said. “Every American should have the freedom to choose what they will or won’t create without fear of being unjustly punished by the government.”
U.S. Sen Ted Cruz, R-Texas, called the ruling a major victory for religious liberty that “underscores that government should never discriminate against religious faith.”
LGBT advocates, though disappointed, found solace in the ruling’s acknowledgement of a “general rule” — that religious objections do not allow business owners to deny equal access to goods and services under public-accommodation laws like Colorado’s.
“This baker may have won the battle, but he’s lost the war,” said James Esseks with the American Civil Liberties Union, which sued on behalf of Charlie Craig and David Mullins, who were denied a Masterpiece cake to celebrate their 2012 wedding.
“The broad rule sought — a license to discriminate based on who (Craig and Mullins) were — they most emphatically did not get that ruling today,” Esseks said.
Chuck Smith, head of Equality Texas, said that while the narrow ruling did not “create a new license to discriminate, it also does not address the discrimination that millions of Americans and Texans still face.”
“Our nation decided more than 50 years ago that when a business decides to open its doors to the public, that business should be open to all. That core principle is at the heart of how we treat one another, and it’s more important than ever in light of today’s decision,” Smith said.
Texas impact
In Texas, both sides of the debate predicted that Monday’s ruling will spur efforts in the Legislature to allow businesses and government employees, particularly those involved with issuing marriage licenses, to decline to serve same-sex couples over sincerely held religious beliefs against gay marriage.
“The First Amendment protects religious liberty and freedom of speech and does not give government power to force artists such as Jack Phillips to express someone else’s message, particularly on an issue such as marriage that has been widely debated in our country,” said Jonathan Saenz, president of Texas Values.
“This decision will go a long way to helping Texas lawmakers pass state law protection on these specific religious freedom attacks from local government laws like Dallas, Austin and San Antonio, just to name a few,” Saenz said, listing cities where anti-discrimination ordinances offer LGBT protections.
The Texas Freedom Network, which fought about two dozen such bills in the 2015 and 2017 legislative sessions, was bracing for more of the same when the Legislature convenes in January.
“We have little doubt that certain politicians will willfully misinterpret today’s ruling, and they’ll hit the gas on efforts to pass discrimination bills next session,” spokesman Dan Quinn said. “There are too many politicians who are hellbent on twisting the meaning of religious freedom to hurt people just because of who they are and who they love.”