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The Supreme Court made an important ruling this week, and like the cases involving Hobby Lobby and the Little Sisters of the Poor, it involved the rights of religious conscience and the ability to uphold personal values in the workplace and marketplace.
Jack Phillips of Masterpiece Cakeshop was a textbook plaintiff. When a gay couple came into his bake shop for a specially designed cake for their wedding in 2012, Phillips refused. He explained that he would be happy to provide any other sort of baked goods that the couple wanted, but that his religious principles prevented him from using his talents to create his elaborate cakes for such an event. He had a longstanding policy of declining to make cakes for events he felt were against his religious beliefs, such as Halloween cakes or divorce celebration party cakes.
He did not deny service, but refused to create a specific specialty item. The couple complained to the Colorado Human Rights Commission, which flatly refused to acknowledge the validity of his objection. Phillips was ordered to provide staff training, change his policies, and provide quarterly reports on compliance. In 2015, the Colorado Court of Appeals ruled that he could not cite his religious beliefs as a reason to refuse service, and the Colorado Supreme Court agreed. From the start, Phillips’ religious objections were treated as a pretext for discrimination by Colorado authorities rather than a valid and protected exercise under the First Amendment.
In arguing the case, the solicitor general argued that a custom cake is not an ordinary baked good, and that its function was artistic rather than utilitarian. “Accordingly, the government may not enact content-based laws commanding a speaker to engage in protected expression: An artist cannot be forced to paint, a musician cannot be forced to play, and a poet cannot be forced to write.” To some extent, that argument is backed up by the conduct of the gay couple themselves, who declined the other goods and services of Masterpiece and Phillips, insisting rather that he must create a special cake for them instead, in recognition of their new status […]