High court signals it’s not ready to decide 2 issues
WASHINGTON — After failing to fully resolve two difficult cases this term, the Supreme Court signaled Monday it was still not ready to decide whether a Christian shop owner can refuse service to a same-sex wedding or when some states have gone too far in gerrymandering their election maps for partisan advantage.
The justices said they would not hear two similar cases in the fall, instead sending them back to lower courts to be reconsidered under the hazy standards they recently issued.
The brief orders, issued without registered dissents, suggest the justices are essentially deadlocked on both issues for now.
The court sent back a pending appeal from a florist in Richland, Wash., who was convicted of violating the state’s civil rights law for refusing to provide a floral arrangement for a wedding of two men.
The court’s one-line order on Monday said Washington state judges should reconsider the case “in l i ght of Masterpiece Cakeshop v. Colorado.”
In that case, the justices, by a 7-2 vote, ruled narrowly for a Colorado baker, but without deciding whether he had a right to refuse service to two men who were getting married. Instead, the court ruled only that the state civil rights commission made comments that reflected a “hostility to religion.”
Lawyers for the Alliance Defending Freedom had filed a similar appeal in the Washington state case.
They described Barronelle Stutzman, owner of Arlene’s Flowers, as a “floral design artist.” She said she had known Robert Ingersoll as a longtime customer and a friend but said she told him she could not Activists speak out recently over the case of a florist who refused to provide services for the wedding of two men. help with his wedding “because of my relationship with Jesus Christ.”
Lawyers for the state quietly urged her to comply with the state’s civil rights law but sued her when she refused. A judge ruled the florist had violated the state law and fined her $1,000.
In her appeal, she urged the Supreme Court to rule that she had a free speech right to refuse to provide “artistic expression” to celebrate a same-sex wedding. She also said that requiring her to provide flowers violated her right to the “free exercise of religion.”
The same arguments were before the justices in the Colorado case.
Meanwhile, North Carolina Republicans had appealed a federal ruling that struck down the state’s congressional districts. The map gave the GOP a lopsided 10-3 margin in its delegation to the House of Representatives.
But rather than decide the appeal, the justices said the lower court should reconsider the case of Rucho v. Common Cause “in light of Gill v. Whitford,” the Wisconsin case. Last week, the justices said only that the plaintiffs in Wisconsin did not have standing to seek a state-wide order because they lived in just a few districts.
The high court did de- cide on Monday a longrunning racial gerrymandering case from Texas, ruling 5-4 in favor of its Republican- controlled Legislature.
After the 2010 census showed a big jump in the state’s Latino population, the Legislature was accused of drawing electoral maps that did not translate these changes into political power for Latinos.
A three-judge federal court in Texas ruled that the state maps were discriminatory under the Voting Rights Act and must be redrawn. The state agreed and adopted a map that judges in Texas had authorized for use in the 2012 election. The state thought it had resolved the matter.
However, in a second round of litigation, the judges ruled the state had not “cured” its map, and it ordered further changes in state legislative districts.
Texas Gov. Greg Abbott appealed, and the high court ruled for the state Monday in Abbott v. Perez. Justice Samuel Alito said the state Legislature faced a “legal obstacle course” and adopted districts that were accepted by judges there. It was a “fundamental legal error” to brand this as racial discrimination, he said.