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SCOTUS Rules 7-2 for Anti-Gay Baker in Masterpiece Cakeshop Case

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Anti-gay baker Jack Phillips, owner of Masterpiece Cakeshop.

The U.S. Supreme Court has ruled 7-2 in favor of anti-gay baker Jack Phillips in Masterpiece Cakeshop vs. Colorado Civil Rights Commission, with Justice Elena Kagan concurring. Justices Ginsburg and Sotomayor dissented.

This is a developing story (refresh for updates)…

Read the ruling HERE. We’ll have some analysis from our legal editor Ari Ezra Waldman coming up. Check in

Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote, in the court’s opinion, that “consideration” of Phillips’ case was compromised by the Civil Rights Commission “which showed elements of a clear and impermissible hostility toward the sincere religious beliefs motivating his objection.”

He added: “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.”

But the Court, while ruling on the specifics of Phillips’ case, failed to rule on the broad issue of discrimination.

Added Kennedy: “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.”

Writes Amy Howe at SCOTUSblog: “Short answer is that the baker wins for now, because the order against him was set aside because he didn’t get a ‘neutral decisionmaker who would give full and fair consideration to his religious objection.'”

On background, in July 2012, David Mullins and Charlie Craig went to Denver’s Masterpiece Cake Shop, owned by Phillips,  looking for a cake to celebrate the couple’s upcoming nuptials.

Phillips denied the couple’s request and later admitted he had turned away other same-sex couples as a matter of policy.

Mullins and Craig filed a complaint with the Colorado Civil Rights Commission under the state’s public accommodations law, the Colorado Anti-Discrimination Act, which covers sexual orientation, which led to a lawsuit, won by the couple in 2013.

The Colorado Civil Rights Commission’s decision noted evidence in the record that Phillips had expressed willingness to take a cake order for the “marriage” of two dogs, but not for the commitment ceremony of two women, and that he would not make a cake for a same-sex couple’s wedding celebration “just as he would not be willing to make a pedophile cake.”

Phillips and his lawyers, the ultraconservative anti-gay legal group Alliance Defending Freedom, have been appealing the ruling since, and losing each time, which is why it ultimately reached SCOTUS.

Some reactions to the ruling:

From the ACLU:

The Supreme Court today reaffirmed the core principle that businesses open to the public must be open to all in Masterpiece Cakeshop v. Colorado Civil Rights Commission. The court did not accept arguments that would have turned back the clock on equality by making our basic civil rights protections unenforceable, but reversed this case based on concerns specific to the facts here.  The American Civil Liberties Union argued the case on behalf of Charlie Craig and David Mullins, who were refused service at a Colorado bakery because they are a same-sex couple.

In 2012, Mullins and Craig visited the Masterpiece Cakeshop to order a cake for their wedding.  After the bakery turned the would-be customers away because they were a same-sex couple, Mullins and Craig filed a complaint with the Colorado Civil Rights Commission. The commission found that the bakery had discriminated against the couple in violation of Colorado law, a decision the Colorado courts upheld. The Supreme Court today found that members of the Commission had made statements evidencing anti-religious bias, and thus had not given a fair consideration to the bakery’s claims.

“The court reversed the Masterpiece Cakeshop decision based on concerns unique to the case but reaffirmed its longstanding rule that states can prevent the harms of discrimination in the marketplace, including against LGBT people.” said Louise Melling, deputy legal director of the ACLU.

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