Cake ruling takes a small bite out of a big issue
The Supreme Court handed a victory on Monday to a Colorado baker who refused to create a wedding cake for a same-sex couple. But the justices left open the huge constitutional question of whether businesses across the USA can refuse to serve gay couples by citing religious or free-speech objections.
While Monday’s 7-2 ruling was also a win for conservatives and religious groups that oppose same-sex marriage, it was a narrow one and not the slam-dunk some had hoped for. Nor was it the major defeat that supporters of gay marriage had feared, one that might have opened the way for broad discrimination.
A more sweeping ruling would have been a renunciation of a longstanding American value: that all individuals have a right to be free from discrimination in their public lives. Americans should be glad that the court’s majority stopped short of such a backward slide.
Though the Supreme Court in 2015 recognized a constitutional right for same-sex couples to marry, many battles remain to be fought. And this one is now left for another day.
The dispute started in 2012, before gay marriage was recognized in Colorado. Baker Jack Phillips refused to create a custom cake for the wedding of Charlie Craig and David Mullins. The couple took the case to the Colorado Civil Rights Commission. Colorado is one of more than 20 states that bar discrimination based on sexual orientation.
The commission ruled against Phillips, and a Colorado appeals court agreed. The justices threw out the commission’s ruling, asserting that some members had shown “impermissible hostility” toward Phillips’ sincerely held religious beliefs.
Justice Anthony Kennedy’s majority opinion made clear to lower courts that similar “disputes 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.”
A broad ruling in favor of Phillips could have opened the door to discrimination by all sorts of vendors who claim a right to artistic expression, as Phillips did: photographers, chefs, suit and dress designers, florists and wedding planners, to name a few.
First Amendment rights to practice religion and free speech are fundamental protections, but they are not unlimited. Philips has an absolute right to his religious beliefs against gay marriage, but when the practice of those beliefs infringes on the rights of others to equal treatment, it goes too far. In this country, when you open a business and sell to the public, you agree to abide by public accommodation laws.
Kennedy’s majority opinion hinted that the court recognizes this broad principle and in another case might rule differently: In general, religious and philosophical objections “do not allow business owners and other actors … to deny protected persons equal access to goods and services,” he wrote.
Congress could set the tone by passing broad protections against discrimination based on sexual orientation.
When Craig and Mullins or any gay couple is turned away by a vendor, the unequal and humiliating treatment defies basic American values. It would be best for the Supreme Court to make that clear sooner rather than later.