Supreme Court debates religion’s place in a case about wedding cake
WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court entered the latest battleground in the culture wars on Tuesday, hearing arguments in a hard-fought clash between gay rights and claims of religious freedom that was a sort of sequel to the court’s 2015 decision establishing a constitutional right to same-sex marriage.
The new case involves the refusal of a Colorado baker, Jack Phillips, to make a wedding cake for a gay couple, and it had some justices worried that a ruling in his favor would undermine the 2015 decision’s promise of equality. But other justices said that a tolerant society must leave room for good-faith dissent based on religious principles.
Justice Anthony Kennedy, who almost certainly holds the crucial vote, said both things.
He asked whether a baker could put a sign in his window saying, “We do not bake cakes for gay weddings.” A lawyer for the Trump administration, which supports Phillips, said yes, so long as the cakes were custom made.
Kennedy looked troubled. “You would not think that an affront to the gay community?” he asked.
Later, though, Kennedy said that a state civil rights commission that had ruled against the baker had been “neither tolerant nor respectful of Mr. Phillips’ religious beliefs.”
The case arose from a brief encounter in 2012, when David Mullins and Charlie Craig visited Phillips’ bakery, Masterpiece Cakeshop, in Lakewood, Colo. The couple were going to be married in Massachusetts, and they were looking for a wedding cake for a reception in Colorado.
Phillips turned them down, saying he would not use his talents to convey a message of support for same-sex marriage as that would clash with his religious faith. The couple say they were humiliated by Phillips’ refusal to serve them, and they filed a complaint with Colorado’s civil rights commission.
Kristen Waggoner, a lawyer for Phillips, said the state should not be able to force him to endorse samesex marriage in violation of his religious principles. But she took a different position about whether a baker could refuse to create a cake for an interracial marriage.
Solicitor General Noel Francisco, the Trump administration lawyer, also said that it would be harder to justify discrimination against interracial couples than gay ones. “Race is particularly unique,” he said.
That distinction did not sit well with some justices. And David Cole, a lawyer for the couple, said it would relegate gay couples to “second-class status.”
But Chief Justice John Roberts said the court’s 2015 decision had anticipated good-faith disagreements over gay unions.
“It went out of its way to talk about the decent and honorable people who may have opposing views,” Roberts said, referring to Kennedy’s majority opinion. (The chief justice had dissented.)
The remark was a sign of Kennedy’s central role in the new case. He is at once the court’s most prominent defender of gay rights and its most committed supporter of free speech.