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Foreign Invaders crisis cost $150B in 2023, forcing some areas to cut police and fire services: report Israel kills head of Hezbollah Intelligence. Status: Not Logged In; Sign In The Left's War On Christians See other The Left's War On Christians Articles Title: Supreme Court sides with Colorado baker who refused to make wedding cake for same-sex couple Source: [None] URL Source: http://www.foxnews.com/politics/201 ... -cake-for-same-sex-couple.html Published: Jun 4, 2018 Author: Bill Mears, Judson Berger Post Date: 2018-06-04 10:42:06 by Justified Keywords: None Views: 3529 Comments: 21 The Supreme Court ruled Monday in favor of a Colorado baker who refused to bake a wedding cake for a same-sex couple. In a 7-2 decision, the justices set aside a Colorado court ruling against the baker -- while stopping short of deciding the broader issue of whether a business can refuse to serve gay and lesbian people. At issue was a July 2012 encounter between the couple and baker Jack Phillips. The battle has since developed into perhaps the most closely watched appeal so far this term before the high court. At the time, Charlie Craig and David Mullins of Denver visited Masterpiece Cakeshop to buy a custom-made wedding cake. Phillips refused his services when told it was for a same-sex couple. A state civil rights commission sanctioned Phillips after a formal complaint from the gay couple. Mullins has described their case as symbolizing “the rights of gay people to receive equal service in business … about basic access to public life." But the Trump administration backed Phillips, who was represented in court by the Alliance Defending Freedom, a conservative Christian nonprofit. He had lost at every step in the legal appeals process, bringing the case down to the Supreme Court. Phillips has said he lost business and had to let employees go because of the controversy. And he has maintained that it’s his choice: "It's not about turning away these customers, it's about doing a cake for an event -- a religious sacred event -- that conflicts with my conscience," he said last year. The court in December specifically examined whether applying Colorado's public accommodations law to compel the local baker to create commercial "expression" violated his constitutionally protected Christian beliefs about marriage. By wading again into the culture wars, the justices had to confront recent decisions on both gay rights and religious liberty: a 2015 landmark opinion legalizing same-sex marriage nationwide and a separate 2014 decision affirming the right of some companies to act on their owner's faith by refusing to provide contraception to its workers. The Trump administration agreed with Phillips' legal claims to a large extent. Attorney General Jeff Sessions in October issued broad guidance to executive branch agencies, reiterating the government should respect religious freedom, which in the Justice Department's eyes extends to people, businesses and organizations. But civil rights groups were concerned the conservative majority on the court may be ready to peel back protections for groups with a history of enduring discrimination – and predicted that giving businesses the right to refuse service to certain customers would undermine non-discrimination laws and hurt minorities. Post Comment   Private Reply   Ignore Thread   Top • Page Up • Full Thread • Page Down • Bottom/Latest Begin Trace Mode for Comment # 15. #10. To: Justified (#0) Below is the Syllabus of the Masterpiece Cakeshop opinion. It is a synopsis of the Opinion, but is not part of the official opinion. The opinion of the court goes to page 18. Kagan and Gorsuch filed concurring opinions. Thomas, with whom Gorsuch joined, filed an opinion concurring in part and concurring in the judgment. Ginsburg, with whom Sotomayor joined, filed a dissenting opinion. Altogether, the opinions span 59 pages. SUPREME COURT OF THE UNITED STATES Syllabus MASTERPIECE CAKESHOP, LTD., ET AL. v. COLORADO CIVIL RIGHTS COMMISSION ET AL. CERTIORARI TO THE COURT OF APPEALS OF COLORADO No. 16–111. Argued December 5, 2017—Decided June 4, 2018 Masterpiece Cakeshop, Ltd., is a Colorado bakery owned and operated by Jack Phillips, an expert baker and devout Christian. In 2012 he told a same-sex couple that he would not create a cake for their wed­ding celebration because of his religious opposition to same-sex mar­riages—marriages that Colorado did not then recognize—but that he would sell them other baked goods, e.g., birthday cakes. The couple filed a charge with the Colorado Civil Rights Commission (Commission) pursuant to the Colorado Anti-Discrimination Act (CADA),which prohibits, as relevant here, discrimination based on sexual ori­entation in a “place of business engaged in any sales to the public and any place offering services . . . to the public.” Under CADA’s admin­istrative review system, the Colorado Civil Rights Division first found probable cause for a violation and referred the case to the Commis­sion. The Commission then referred the case for a formal hearing be­fore a state Administrative Law Judge (ALJ), who ruled in the cou­ple’s favor. In so doing, the ALJ rejected Phillips’ First Amendment claims: that requiring him to create a cake for a same-sex wedding would violate his right to free speech by compelling him to exercise his artistic talents to express a message with which he disagreed and would violate his right to the free exercise of religion. Both the Commission and the Colorado Court of Appeals affirmed. Held: The Commission’s actions in this case violated the Free Exercise Clause. Pp. 9–18. (a) The laws and the Constitution can, and in some instances must,protect gay persons and gay couples in the exercise of their civil rights, but religious and philosophical objections to gay marriage are protected views and in some instances protected forms of expression. See Obergefell v. Hodges, 576 U. S. ___, ___. While it is unexceptional [2] services on the same terms and conditions as are offered to other members of the public, the law must be applied in a manner that is neutral toward religion. To Phillips, his claim that using his artistic skills to make an expressive statement, a wedding endorsement in his own voice and of his own creation, has a significant First Amendment speech component and implicates his deep and sincere religious beliefs. His dilemma was understandable in 2012, which was before Colorado recognized the validity of gay marriages per­formed in the State and before this Court issued United States v. Windsor, 570 U. S. 744, or Obergefell. Given the State’s position at the time, there is some force to Phillips’ argument that he was not unreasonable in deeming his decision lawful. State law at the time also afforded storekeepers some latitude to decline to create specific messages they considered offensive. Indeed, while the instant enforcement proceedings were pending, the State Civil Rights Division concluded in at least three cases that a baker acted lawfully in declin­ing to create cakes with decorations that demeaned gay persons or gay marriages. Phillips too was entitled to a neutral and respectful consideration of his claims in all the circumstances of the case. Pp. 9–12. (b) That consideration was compromised, however, by the Commis­sion’s treatment of Phillips’ case, which showed elements of a clear and impermissible hostility toward the sincere religious beliefs moti­vating his objection. As the record shows, some of the commissioners at the Commission’s formal, public hearings endorsed the view that religious beliefs cannot legitimately be carried into the public sphere or commercial domain, disparaged Phillips’ faith as despicable and characterized it as merely rhetorical, and compared his invocation of his sincerely held religious beliefs to defenses of slavery and the Hol­ocaust. No commissioners objected to the comments. Nor were they mentioned in the later state-court ruling or disavowed in the briefs filed here. The comments thus cast doubt on the fairness and impar­tiality of the Commission’s adjudication of Phillips’ case. Another indication of hostility is the different treatment of Phillips’ case and the cases of other bakers with objections to anti-gay mes­sages who prevailed before the Commission. The Commission ruled against Phillips in part on the theory that any message on the re­quested wedding cake would be attributed to the customer, not to the baker. Yet the Division did not address this point in any of the cases involving requests for cakes depicting anti-gay marriage symbolism. The Division also considered that each bakery was willing to sell oth­er products to the prospective customers, but the Commission found Phillips’ willingness to do the same irrelevant. The State Court of [3] Appeals’ brief discussion of this disparity of treatment does not an­swer Phillips’ concern that the State’s practice was to disfavor the re­ligious basis of his objection. Pp. 12–16. (c) For these reasons, the Commission’s treatment of Phillips’ case violated the State’s duty under the First Amendment not to base laws or regulations on hostility to a religion or religious viewpoint. The government, consistent with the Constitution’s guarantee of free ex­ercise, cannot impose regulations that are hostile to the religious be­liefs of affected citizens and cannot act in a manner that passes judgment upon or presupposes the illegitimacy of religious beliefs and practices. Church of Lukumi Babalu Aye, Inc. v. Hialeah, 508 U. S. 520. Factors relevant to the assessment of governmental neu­trality include “the historical background of the decision under chal­lenge, the specific series of events leading to the enactment or official policy in question, and the legislative or administrative history, in­cluding contemporaneous statements made by members of the deci­sion making body.” Id., at 540. In view of these factors, the record here demonstrates that the Commission’s consideration of Phillips’ case was neither tolerant nor respectful of his religious beliefs. The Commission gave “every appearance,” id., at 545, of adjudicating his religious objection based on a negative normative “evaluation of the particular justification” for his objection and the religious grounds for it, id., at 537, but government has no role in expressing or even sug­gesting whether the religious ground for Phillips’ conscience-based objection is legitimate or illegitimate. The inference here is thus that Phillips’ religious objection was not considered with the neutrality required by the Free Exercise Clause. The State’s interest could have been weighed against Phillips’ sincere religious objections in a way consistent with the requisite religious neutrality that must be strictly observed. But the official expressions of hostility to religion in some of the commissioners’ comments were inconsistent with that re­quirement, and the Commission’s disparate consideration of Phillips’ case compared to the cases of the other bakers suggests the same. Pp. 16–18. 370 P. 3d 272, reversed. nolu chan  posted on  2018-06-04   13:09:21 ET  Reply   Untrace   Trace   Private Reply   #11. To: nolu chan (#10) I found two brief Tweet summaries, the second one from the baker. Basically, the Supreme Court found that some Colorado commissioners are jerks. — Robert VerBruggen (@RAVerBruggen) June 4, 2018 I'm grateful for the SCOTUS decision, but remain v. apprehensive. If Colo commission had said not "Bake the cake, bigot," but merely, "Bake the cake," would the ruling have been different? https://t.co/ePL87zMXAj — Rod Dreher (@roddreher) June 4, 2018 Not the broader ruling the Right was hoping for. Tooconservative  posted on  2018-06-04   13:24:25 ET  Reply   Untrace   Trace   Private Reply   #14. To: Tooconservative, Liberator, Justified (#11) Not the broader ruling the Right was hoping for. Not at all. The Court did not really decide the dispute between the baker and the customer. The Court decided that the proceedings before the Colorado Civil Rights Commission were fatally flawed by Commission prejudice, and exhibited disparate treatment when compared with other case rulings. The Court saw the need to invalidate the rulings of the Commission and the State court that enforced the Commission's order. Kennedy Opinion of the Court at page 18, (boldface added) The official expressions of hostility to religion in some of the commissioners’ comments—comments that were not disavowed at the Commission or by the State at any point in the proceedings that led to affirmance of the order—were inconsistent with what the Free Exercise Clause requires. The Commission’s disparate consideration of Phillips’ case compared to the cases of the other bakers suggests the same. For these reasons, the order must be set aside. III The Commission’s hostility was inconsistent with the First Amendment’s guarantee that our laws be applied in a manner that is neutral toward religion. Phillips was entitled to a neutral decision maker who would give full and fair consideration to his religious objection as he sought to assert it in all of the circumstances in which this case was presented, considered, and decided. In this case the adjudication concerned a context that may well be different going forward in the respects noted above. However later cases raising these or similar concerns are resolved in the future, for these reasons the rulings of the Commission and of the state court that enforced the Commission’s order must be invalidated. The outcome of cases like this in other circumstances must await further elaboration in the courts, all in the context of recognizing that these 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. The judgment of the Colorado Court of Appeals is reversed. It is so ordered. The Ginsburg dissenting opinion describes the nature of the cakes requested in the Jack case. Ginsburg dissent at pages 3-4: (boldface added) I On March 13, 2014—approximately three months after the ALJ ruled in favor of the same-sex couple, Craig and Mullins, and two months before the Commission heard Phillips’ appeal from that decision—William Jack visited three Colorado bakeries. His visits followed a similar pattern. He requested two cakes “made to resemble an open Bible. He also requested that each cake be decorated with Biblical verses. [He] requested that one of the cakes include an image of two groomsmen, holding hands, with a red ‘X’ over the image. On one cake, he requested [on] one side[,] . . . ‘God hates sin. Psalm 45:7’ and on the opposite side of the cake ‘Homosexuality is a detestable sin. Leviticus 18:2.’ On the second cake, [the one] with the image of the two groomsmen covered by a red ‘X’ [Jack] requested [these words]: ‘God loves sinners’ and on the other side ‘While we were yet sinners Christ died for us. Romans 5:8.’ ” App. to Pet. for Cert. 319a; see id., at 300a, 310a. In contrast to Jack, Craig and Mullins simply requested a wedding cake: They mentioned no message or anything else distinguishing the cake they wanted to buy from any other wedding cake Phillips would have sold. One bakery told Jack it would make cakes in the shape of Bibles, but would not decorate them with the requested messages; the owner told Jack her bakery “does not dis­criminate” and “accept[s] all humans.” Id., at 301a (inter­nal quotation marks omitted). The second bakery owner told Jack he “had done open Bibles and books many times and that they look amazing,” but declined to make the specific cakes Jack described because the baker regarded the messages as “hateful.” Id., at 310a (internal quotation marks omitted). The third bakery, according to Jack, said it would bake the cakes, but would not include the re­quested message. Id., at 319a.2 Jack filed charges against each bakery with the Colorado Civil Rights Division (Division). The Division found no probable cause to support Jack’s claims of unequal treat­ment and denial of goods or services based on his Chris­tian religious beliefs. Id., at 297a, 307a, 316a. In this regard, the Division observed that the bakeries regularly produced cakes and other baked goods with Christian symbols and had denied other customer requests for de­signs demeaning people whose dignity the Colorado Anti-discrimination Act (CADA) protects. See id., at 305a, 314a, 324a. The Commission summarily affirmed the Division’s no-probable-cause finding. See id., at 326a– 331a. The winning skewering goes to Gorsuch, joined by Alito, concurring. At pages 8-10 of the Gorsuch concurring opinion, (boldface added) Take the first suggestion first. To suggest that cakes with words convey a message but cakes without words do not—all in order to excuse the bakers in Mr. Jack’s case while penalizing Mr. Phillips—is irrational. Not even the Commission or court of appeals purported to rely on that distinction. Imagine Mr. Jack asked only for a cake with a symbolic expression against same-sex marriage rather than a cake bearing words conveying the same idea. Surely the Commission would have approved the bakers’ intentional wish to avoid participating in that message too. Nor can anyone reasonably doubt that a wedding cake without words conveys a message. Words or not and whatever the exact design, it celebrates a wedding, and if the wedding cake is made for a same-sex couple it cele­brates a same-sex wedding. See 370 P. 3d, at 276 (stating that Mr. Craig and Mr. Mullins “requested that Phillips design and create a cake to celebrate their same-sex wed­ding”) (emphasis added). Like “an emblem or flag,” a cake for a same-sex wedding is a symbol that serves as “a short cut from mind to mind,” signifying approval of a specific “system, idea, [or] institution.” West Virginia Bd. of Ed. v. Barnette, 319 U. S. 624, 632 (1943). It is precisely that approval that Mr. Phillips intended to withhold in keeping with his religious faith. The Commission denied Mr. Phillips that choice, even as it afforded the bakers in Mr. Jack’s case the choice to refuse to advance a message they deemed offensive to their secular commitments. That is not neutral. Nor would it be proper for this or any court to suggest that a person must be forced to write words rather than create a symbol before his religious faith is implicated. Civil authorities, whether “high or petty,” bear no license to declare what is or should be “orthodox” when it comes to religious beliefs, id., at 642, or whether an adherent has “correctly perceived” the commands of his religion, Thomas, supra, at 716. Instead, it is our job to look beyond the formality of written words and afford legal protection to any sincere act of faith. See generally Hurley v. Irish-American Gay, Lesbian and Bisexual Group of Boston, Inc., 515 U. S. 557, 569 (1995) (“[T]he Constitution looks beyond written or spoken words as mediums of expression,” which are “not a condition of constitutional protection”). The second suggestion fares no better. Suggesting that this case is only about “wedding cakes”—and not a wed­ding cake celebrating a same-sex wedding—actually points up the problem. At its most general level, the cake at issue in Mr. Phillips’s case was just a mixture of flour and eggs; at its most specific level, it was a cake celebrating the same-sex wedding of Mr. Craig and Mr. Mullins. We are told here, however, to apply a sort of Goldilocks rule: describing the cake by its ingredients is too general; un­derstanding it as celebrating a same-sex wedding is too specific; but regarding it as a generic wedding cake is just right. The problem is, the Commission didn’t play with the level of generality in Mr. Jack’s case in this way. It didn’t declare, for example, that because the cakes Mr. Jack requested were just cakes about weddings generally, and all such cakes were the same, the bakers had to pro­duce them. Instead, the Commission accepted the bakers’ view that the specific cakes Mr. Jack requested conveyed a message offensive to their convictions and allowed them to refuse service. Having done that there, it must do the same here. Any other conclusion would invite civil authorities to gerrymander their inquiries based on the parties they prefer. Why calibrate the level of generality in Mr. Phil­lips’s case at “wedding cakes” exactly—and not at, say, “cakes” more generally or “cakes that convey a message regarding same-sex marriage” more specifically? If “cakes” were the relevant level of generality, the Commis­sion would have to order the bakers to make Mr. Jack’s requested cakes just as it ordered Mr. Phillips to make the requested cake in his case. Conversely, if “cakes that convey a message regarding same-sex marriage” were the relevant level of generality, the Commission would have to respect Mr. Phillips’s refusal to make the requested cake just as it respected the bakers’ refusal to make the cakes Mr. Jack requested. In short, when the same level of generality is applied to both cases, it is no surprise that the bakers have to be treated the same. Only by adjusting the dials just right—fine-tuning the level of generality up or down for each case based solely on the identity of the parties and the substance of their views—can you engi­neer the Commission’s outcome, handing a win to Mr. Jack’s bakers but delivering a loss to Mr. Phillips. Such results-driven reasoning is improper. Neither the Com­mission nor this Court may apply a more specific level of generality in Mr. Jack’s case (a cake that conveys a mes­sage regarding same-sex marriage) while applying a higher level of generality in Mr. Phillips’s case (a cake that conveys no message regarding same-sex marriage). nolu chan  posted on  2018-06-04   19:34:41 ET  Reply   Untrace   Trace   Private Reply   #15. To: nolu chan (#14) (Edited) Not at all. The Court did not really decide the dispute between the baker and the customer. It is what I meant when I said this was a narrow ruling. It doesn't seem to apply to any other current cases that I know of. Apparently, the way they went after this one baker scared all the others off. But the larger issues of religious conscience versus requirements for equal public accommodation were not addressed at all. So I consider that about as narrow a ruling as they could make. As soon as I saw it was 7-2 with Breyer in the majority, I knew it had to be very narrow or Breyer wouldn't have joined in. The winning skewering goes to Gorsuch, joined by Alito, concurring. At pages 8-10 of the Gorsuch concurring opinion, (boldface added) Gorsuch and Alito need a new hobby.     : ) It's a damned cake, for God's sake. Tooconservative  posted on  2018-06-04   19:48:51 ET  Reply   Untrace   Trace   Private Reply   Replies to Comment # 15. #17. To: Tooconservative (#15) It's a damned cake, for God's sake. This whole brouhaw is a fine example of why we should kill all lawyers. ;-) tpaine  posted on  2018-06-04 20:04:30 ET  Reply   Untrace   Trace   Private Reply   End Trace Mode for Comment # 15. Top • Page Up • Full Thread • Page Down • Bottom/Latest

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