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On Monday, June 4, the United States Supreme Court vindicated Jack Phillips, proprietor of Masterpiece Cakeshop. For nearly six years, the Colorado Civil Rights Commission has been preventing him from creating wedding cakes, 40 percent of his business.
His crime, according to the Colorado Court of Appeals, is that he declined to “design and create a cake to celebrate (a) same-sex wedding.” On Monday, the Court ruled that “(t)he 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 contested both his right to free speech and his right to free exercise of religion. The Court didn’t answer the free speech claim, limiting the ruling to the free exercise of religion. Some were disappointed that they failed to address free speech.
I think we should all thank the Court’s bipartisan majority (7-2) for clarifying six important points about the free exercise of religion.
First, the Court declares plainly: “religious and philosophical objections to gay marriage are protected views and in some instances protected forms of expression.” This principle is not contradictory to the “general rule that such objections do not allow business owners and other actors in the economy and in society to deny protected persons equal access to goods and services.”
At last, the Court has put an end to the false narrative that a complementary view of marriage is inherently discriminatory. There is a discrimination against persons and there is the rejection of an idea. These two are not the same thing. The first is wrong and the second is not, and the Court has plainly recognized the difference.
Second, Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote on page 10, “When it comes to weddings, it can be assumed that a member of the clergy who objects to gay marriage on moral or religious grounds could not be compelled to perform the ceremony.” It is not a “neutral or generally applicable public accommodations” ordinance if it jeopardizes people for declining to perform a wedding on moral or religious grounds.
Third, the Court scolded the Colorado Civil Rights commissioners who argued that a person can […]