Justices show no rush to decide controversial cases

WASHINGTON >> The Supreme Court signaled Monday that it is in no hurry to decide two important questions it sidestepped earlier this term: whether a business owner’s religious beliefs can justify refusing wedding services to same-sex couples, and how courts should evaluate extreme partisan gerrymandering.

The justices sent back the case of a Washington state florist who was found to have violated the state’s anti-discrimination law, as well as a ruling that North Carolina’s redistricting plan is unconstitutional. They said lower courts should reconsider those decisions by applying the rather gauzy guidelines the court issued on those subjects earlier this month.

It was like punting after a punt — raising questions about the careful path the court is treading this term.

One of the biggest: whether the delay is related to the plans of Justice Anthony Kennedy, a pivotal vote whose future on the bench is a matter of intense speculation. Kennedy, who will turn 82 on July 23, may decide to retire, and the court is sometimes reluctant to take controversial cases when the ideologically divided justices don’t know who will decide them next term.

The answer could come this week as the court finishes its work for this term with decisions expected about President Donald Trump’s ban on travelers from certain mostly Muslim countries and a longdelayed showdown on public employee unions.

If there was a message in the court’s actions Monday, it did not explain it. That’s how the court often operates.

And sometimes the simplest explanation is the right one. The court often returns cases to lower courts when they touch on issues just considered.

“We expected this procedural step,” Washington Attorney General Bob Ferguson said in a statement Monday after the court vacated a finding by the Washington State Supreme Court that florist Barronelle Stutzman had violated the state’s antidiscrimination law.

Kennedy wrote Masterpiece, but offered little about the merits of the case. Instead, it relied on a factspecific finding: that members of the Colorado Civil Rights Commission had been improperly hostile to baker Jack Phillips’ religious justifications for refusing to make a wedding cake for a same-sex couple.

The decision left undecided whether a business owner’s religious beliefs or free speech rights can justify refusing some services to gay people.