Supreme Court Rules In Favor Of Colorado Baker

[Mister Agenda]

We had a case many years ago in SC where a restaurant owner by the name of Maurice Bessinger argued in court that it was against his religious freedom to serve interracial couples in his restaurant. He lost. I would hate for that ruling to have to be revisited. Say what you want about the man, that was his sincere religious belief.

[robvalue]

Religion shouldn't trump the law, in my opinion. If your religion prevents you from doing a job properly, then you just shouldn't do it.

Edit: I'm all for reasonable accommodation, of course. But refusing to serve people you don't like isn't reasonable.

[Clueless Morgan]

Not a silly question, I said it before and I will say it again, cakes don't have sexual orientation, they are cakes.

And dresses don’t have a political stance.

If it were illegal to discriminate against someone for being a republican then I'd see your point, but it's not. Political opinions aren't within the realm of a protected class.  Homosexuality, in Colorado, is a protected class.

You might want to read Justice Gorsuch's concurring opinion on that matter.

See here.

Thanks.

How does effect a person's decorating ability? It obviously doesn't effect a person's ability one bit. The issue is should a person be legally required to use their ability to create a cake to be used for a function or purpose which they personally don't agree with.

No one here would argue that a baker has every right to refuse to bake a cake for a NAMBLA recruiting event. But when the event is a gay wedding, people feel differently. Should that be the law?

It already is the law in many states.  Homosexuals are named as a protected class in many states who cannot be discriminated against because of their sexual orientation.  The difference between a NAMBLA recruiting cake and a gay wedding cake is that NAMBLA isn't protected from being discriminated against by law.  They have the first amendment right to assemble and advocate for their views but they don't have legal protections from other people's first amendment rights to disagree with their views and refuse them service.

In the cake case, the baker has the first amendment right to disagree with gay marriage but doesn't have the legal right under Colorado anti-discrimination laws to refuse to serve gay customers or gay events.

I don't see how this case would be substantially different from a (admittedly hypothetical (now)) situation where a Mormon baker refuses a cake to an African American couple because they honestly and sincerely believe that people of African decent are cursed as decedents of Ham and thus have a religious basis for their discrimination against African Americans.

Furthermore, I think that the baker is committing systematic discrimination against a protected class because they state that they are unwilling to bake certain other kinds of cakes for any customers (Halloween cakes, adult themed cakes, etc.) but will provide wedding cakes to heterosexual couples or for heterosexual weddings.

A more interesting question is this. Suppose when the gay couple approached this baker he had instead told them that he'd be willing to bake them a wedding cake but since he didn't personally agree with gay marriage, he did not expect that the resulting cake would be his best work. IOW, I'll make it for you and sell it to you, but I won't do a very good job and you're probably not going to like it. Still illegal then?

That is an interesting question.  I suppose if this baker is proven to consistently provide substandard cakes to gay customers (and by substandard I mean with respect to comparable cakes made for straight customers) then I think a legal case for discrimination could be made.

Would it not be similar to a baker who consistently provides substandard cakes to African Americans?

[Neo-Scholastic]

Religion shouldn't trump the law, in my opinion.

The supreme law of the land is the US Constitution which includes not only the free exercise of religion, i.e. being able to live in accordance with sincerely held convictions, but also freedom of association, which includes who you want to associate with personally, politically, and economically.

[CapnAwesome]

A lot of people's comments seem to think this is decision has overturned the 64 civil rights act, for some reason.

[johan]

A more interesting question is this. Suppose when the gay couple approached this baker he had instead told them that he'd be willing to bake them a wedding cake but since he didn't personally agree with gay marriage, he did not expect that the resulting cake would be his best work. IOW, I'll make it for you and sell it to you, but I won't do a very good job and you're probably not going to like it. Still illegal then?

That is an interesting question.  I suppose if this baker is proven to consistently provide substandard cakes to gay customers (and by substandard I mean with respect to comparable cakes made for straight customers) then I think a legal case for discrimination could be made.

Would it not be similar to a baker who consistently provides substandard cakes to African Americans?

How would one prove in a legal sense and beyond a reasonable doubt that their cake was substandard? And how would one realistically be able to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that all cakes prepared for [insert group] were substandard while all cakes prepared for everyone else were not substandard?

Let's go even further and take the cake itself out of the equation. Lets say the cakes themselves are baked identically and taste identical. But the decorating is different. Since decoration on every cake is a one-off custom creation, how would one prove in a legal sense that the baker purposely didn't do as good of a job on their cake because of their sexual orientation?

Seems to me that would nearly impossible to prove. So much so that any discrimination law on the subject would be all but unenforceable in those cases. What you didn't like my decorating? Well that was the best I could do with the time I had available. But since you don't like it, you don't have to buy the cake. You're free to go have some other bakery make you a better one. Have a nice day. Seems hard to imagine you could prove discrimination in that situation.

[The Grand Nudger]

Religion shouldn't trump the law, in my opinion.

The supreme law of the land is the US Constitution which includes not only the free exercise of religion, i.e. being able to live in accordance with sincerely held convictions, but also freedom of association, which includes who you want to associate with personally, politically, and economically.

Strange how the religiously minded think that their right to free exercise can be used to strip others of their rights.

[Divinity]

This whole sincerely held belief nonsense is stupid.

If human sacrifice were one of my strongly held beliefs, I doubt people would be like "You can't interfere with her rights! She can sacrifice whoever she wants."

[The Grand Nudger]

The right to discriminate against gays is taken to be absolute, and the right to service at a business covered under public accoms section 2 is...somehow....negotiable.

[Amarok]

The supreme law of the land is the US Constitution which includes not only the free exercise of religion, i.e. being able to live in accordance with sincerely held convictions, but also freedom of association, which includes who you want to associate with personally, politically, and economically.

Strange how the religiously minded think that their right to free exercise can be used to strip others of their rights.

Because they believe rights exist only for them