Religious liberty vs. gay rights: Much left unsettled

Baker’s court win applies to narrow circumstances

A Supreme Court ruling in favor of a Colorado baker who refused to make a custom cake for a same-sex wedding could mark the first step toward allowing businesses to withhold certain services based on religious grounds, but it doesn’t open the floodgates for widespread discrimination.

The outcome was a symbolic victory for what the baker’s supporters said is religious freedom. Legal analysts said the ruling is very specific to the circumstances of this case, which covered Jack Phillips’ decision not to provide a cake to same-sex couple Charlie Craig and Dave Mullins.

That means it’s unclear whether other businesses with religious objections could discriminate against customers based on their beliefs.

Experts agreed that the circumstances in which discrimination is potentially legal are very few in the eyes of the law, even after Monday’s ruling written by Justice

Anthony Kennedy.

“You’ve got a possible basis for constitutional protection, but there’s some uncertainty about it,” said Douglas Laycock, a University of Virginia law professor and expert on religious liberty who won a Supreme Court case in 2015 establishing a Muslim prisoner’s right to grow a beard. “It does not create a simple across-the-board right to conscientious objection.”

People who object to same-sex relationships aren’t suddenly free to discriminate at will, said Christopher Lund, a Wayne State University Law School professor who teaches religious liberty courses.

“If you’re a religious baker in a different jurisdiction and you feel a conscientious objection to doing a cake for a gay wedding, you don’t know what will happen — you might be held liable, maybe you won’t,” Lund said. “But in most of these cases, the religious bakers, the florists, the photographers

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