OLYMPIA, Wash. (BP) — Barronelle Stutzman’s commitment to operate her florist business according to Christian convictions again found an unreceptive audience in Washington’s highest court. Baronnelle Stutzman The state Supreme Court ruled in a unanimous decision June 6 that Washington’s judicial system did not demonstrate religious animosity toward Stutzman when it concluded she illegally discriminated by declining to design flowers for a same-sex wedding. The court also ruled against the florist in 2017. Stutzman’s case returned to Washington’s highest court after the U.S. Supreme Court annulled in a 2018 order a lower-court ruling against her. The order also instructed the Washington Supreme Court to reconsider its previous decision in light of the justices’ new opinion in favor of a Colorado cake artist who refused to design and decorate a cake to celebrate the wedding of two men. In that 7-2 decision, the high court ruled the Colorado Civil Rights Commission violated the religious free exercise clause of the First Amendment and demonstrated in its action "religious hostility" toward Jack Phillips, owner of Masterpiece Cakeshop. The Washington Supreme Court, which did not hold oral arguments in Stutzman’s case this time, found neither it nor a lower court exhibited such animosity […]
