Civil rights groups emphasized the narrowness of a U.S. Supreme Court ruling this month that favored a Colorado baker who refused to serve a gay couple wanting to buy a cake for their wedding reception.
But the ruling means more business owners will try to use their religious beliefs to discriminate against people based on their sexual orientation — or other status. Just a day after the Supreme Court ruling in Masterpiece Cakeshop v. Colorado Civil Rights Commission, there were news reports from around the country — Indiana, Arizona, Texas, Colorado, California and Georgia — of business owners announcing plans to refuse service or sales to LGBT people.
Meanwhile, Jack Phillips — the baker at the center of the high court case — faced a torrent of criticism, especially on the food-focused social-media platform Yelp.
In 2012, Charlie Craig and Dave Mullins asked Phillips, owner of Masterpiece Cakeshop in suburban Denver, to make them a wedding cake. He refused, he said, because he’s a Christian.
The couple turned to the state of Colorado, which has legislation banning discrimination based on sexual orientation — and a process for determining whether bias has occurred.
The Colorado Civil Rights Commission decided that Phillips discriminated against the gay couple, violating their rights.
Phillips, represented by the right-wing Alliance Defending Freedom and supported by the Trump administration, sought a higher review and ended up before the U.S. Supreme Court.
Arguments took place in December 2017 and the 7-2 ruling was issued June 4.
Writing for the majority, Justice Anthony Kennedy said the state violated the baker’s rights under the First Amendment but said the broader issue of whether there can be faith-based exemptions to anti-discrimination laws “must await further elaboration.”
Kennedy, during oral argument, signaled trouble with what appeared to him to be anti-religious comments by a member of the Colorado commission.
“We read this decision as a reaffirmation of the court’s longstanding commitment to civil rights protections and the reality that the states have the power to protect everyone in America from discrimination,” said James Esseks, the director of the American Civil Liberties Union LGBT and HIV Project. The ACLU represented Craig and Mullins.
The ACLU and a host of LGBT groups pointed to a passage in the decision, joined by liberals Elena Kagan and Stephen Breyer, that said 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.”
Still, in on-the-street interviews and on-the-web surveys by WiG, people repeatedly asked: How could the court not see Craig and Mullins were subject to indignities because of the baker’s bias?
And clearly, each side involved in the case interpreted the decision differently.
Esseks said the court did not say Phillips was free to turn away gay customers. Phillips’ attorney, Kristen Waggoner at the ADF, said the baker can refuse a same-sex couple service without fear of another legal fight.
Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Sonia Sotomayor dissented in Masterpiece. Ginsburg wrote, “I strongly disagree … with the court’s conclusion that Craig and Mullins should lose this case.”
Later this month, the justices could decide to take a case involving a florist who refused to serve a same-sex couple. Other similar disputes involve video producers, graphic artists, photographers and lodgers who say they oppose same-sex marriage on religious grounds and don’t want to participate in same-sex weddings.
“The court did not rule that the Constitution grants the right to discriminate, quite the contrary, the decision maintains the longstanding principle that business owners cannot deny equal access to goods and services,” said Vanita Gupta, president and CEO of the Leadership Conference Education fund.
“But make no mistake,” she added, “the decision makes clear that our fight for equal rights and dignity for all must continue. Yesterday it was barbecue. Today, it’s cake. Tomorrow it will surely be something else. And we will be there fighting.”
High court decisions to come
Still to come this month from the court is a ruling in a potentially landmark case out of Wisconsin on partisan gerrymandering: Gill v. Whitford. The court additionally heard redistricting cases out of Texas and Maryland.
In Gill, the court is expected to decide whether the district court had the authority to hear a statewide challenge to the GOP-crafted redistricting plan for Wisconsin rather than district-by-district, as well as whether the lower court properly held the redistricting was an impermissible partisan gerrymander.
There are other questions before the court in Gill, a case brought to the justices by the Walker administration after losing in the lower courts. Two key ones are whether partisan-gerrymandering claims are justiciable and whether the lower court wrongly adopted what the state called as a watered-down version of a partisan-gerrymander test.
Nearing the end of their nine-month term, the justices also are due to deliver decisions in:
- Trump v. Hawaii, on the constitutionality of President Donald Trump’s travel ban.
- Carpenter v. United States, dealing with the warrantless seizure and search of cellphone records to track locations.
- Janus v. American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees Council 31, dealing with whether public-sector employees can refuse to pay dues to their union.
- Minnesota Voters Alliance v. Mansky, dealing with whether a law banning political apparel at polling places violates the First Amendment.
Note: This story originally published in the Wisconsin Gazette.