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The Left's War On Christians Title: Supreme Court sides with Colorado baker who refused to make wedding cake for same-sex couple The Supreme Court ruled Monday in favor of a Colorado baker who refused to bake a wedding cake for a same-sex couple. In a 7-2 decision, the justices set aside a Colorado court ruling against the baker -- while stopping short of deciding the broader issue of whether a business can refuse to serve gay and lesbian people. At issue was a July 2012 encounter between the couple and baker Jack Phillips. The battle has since developed into perhaps the most closely watched appeal so far this term before the high court. At the time, Charlie Craig and David Mullins of Denver visited Masterpiece Cakeshop to buy a custom-made wedding cake. Phillips refused his services when told it was for a same-sex couple. A state civil rights commission sanctioned Phillips after a formal complaint from the gay couple. Mullins has described their case as symbolizing “the rights of gay people to receive equal service in business … about basic access to public life." But the Trump administration backed Phillips, who was represented in court by the Alliance Defending Freedom, a conservative Christian nonprofit. He had lost at every step in the legal appeals process, bringing the case down to the Supreme Court. Phillips has said he lost business and had to let employees go because of the controversy. And he has maintained that it’s his choice: "It's not about turning away these customers, it's about doing a cake for an event -- a religious sacred event -- that conflicts with my conscience," he said last year. The court in December specifically examined whether applying Colorado's public accommodations law to compel the local baker to create commercial "expression" violated his constitutionally protected Christian beliefs about marriage. By wading again into the culture wars, the justices had to confront recent decisions on both gay rights and religious liberty: a 2015 landmark opinion legalizing same-sex marriage nationwide and a separate 2014 decision affirming the right of some companies to act on their owner's faith by refusing to provide contraception to its workers. The Trump administration agreed with Phillips' legal claims to a large extent. Attorney General Jeff Sessions in October issued broad guidance to executive branch agencies, reiterating the government should respect religious freedom, which in the Justice Department's eyes extends to people, businesses and organizations. But civil rights groups were concerned the conservative majority on the court may be ready to peel back protections for groups with a history of enduring discrimination – and predicted that giving businesses the right to refuse service to certain customers would undermine non-discrimination laws and hurt minorities. Post Comment Private Reply Ignore Thread Top • Page Up • Full Thread • Page Down • Bottom/Latest Now that the owners are bankrupt can they sue for civil rights violation from the government's abuse of power!!!
#2. To: All (#1) I think I would sue the plaintiffs too since they started this crap!
#3. To: Justified (#2) (Edited) I think I would sue the plaintiffs too since they started this crap! As entertaining as that prospect might be, that might be a difficult case to make, even under the lower standards of proof in a civil suit, because I think the baker would have to demonstrate targeted malicious actions against him to make a point or drive him out of business for being deeply religious, whereas the defendants would simply claim they were exercising a "right" under the current CO law. I knew the case but didn't dive into the details - perhaps there is documentation demonstrating malicious intent. I am not a lawyer, nor do I play one on TV or anywhere else. But I know a few things about how the law works.
#4. To: TooConservative (#0) Ginsburg and Sotomayor dissented. So, Kagan and Breyer were part of the majority.
#5. To: Justified (#2) I think I would sue the plaintiffs too since they started this crap! Zero chance of victory in that suit. It would be summarily dismissed by the judge. The plaintiffs had the right to sue under the Colorado statute. The Supreme Court today ruled that the process by which the baker's case was reviewed disregarded his free expression of religion rights, and thus found for him. They did not rule past that. They didn't overturn the Colorado law. They said that the way it was applied to him, the facts and circumstances of his case, showed an unacceptable anti-religious bias.
#6. To: Justified (#0) Mullins has described their case as symbolizing “the rights of gay people to receive equal service in business … about basic access to public life." This all started in 1964 with the U.S. Supreme Court case, Heart of Atlanta Motel, Inc. v. United States "The Court held that the Commerce Clause allowed Congress to regulate local incidents of commerce, and that the Civil Rights Act of 1964 passed constitutional muster. The Court noted that the applicability of Title II was "carefully limited to enterprises having a direct and substantial relation to the interstate flow of goods and people. . ." The Court thus concluded that places of public accommodation had no "right" to select guests as they saw fit, free from governmental regulation." A real bastardization of the Commerce Clause if I ever saw one. Stay at a different motel. Use a different baker. Geez Louise. A private business is just that. Private. They should be allowed to accept or deny service to anyone, no matter the reason, and accept the results of that decision. No shirt, no shoes, no service works for me.
#7. To: Hank Rearden (#3) As entertaining as that prospect might be, that might be a difficult case to make, even under the lower standards of proof in a civil suit, because I think the baker would have to demonstrate targeted malicious actions against him to make a point or drive him out of business for being deeply religious, whereas the defendants would simply claim they were exercising a "right" under the current CO law. I think you could make the case that they went out of their way to specifically target this baker. Still a long shot, as you observe.
#8. To: Justified, nolu chan, Vicomte13 (#0) And he has maintained that it’s his choice: "It's not about turning away these customers, it's about doing a cake for an event -- a religious sacred event -- that conflicts with my conscience," he said last year. I saw him interviewed. It may be that this verdict worked for him because he made a claim that the cakes were perishable works of religious art. So there are a lot of other instances and even other bakers that might not prevail. No word on how broadly or narrowly the Court ruled. Did they protect just this one baker (and others very similar to him) or did they rule more broadly? Since this is 7-2 decision, I'm thinking this is a narrower rather than a broader ruling from the Court. We'll have to await some analysis of the decision. Or we could just wait for nolu to sleuth it out for us. : )
#9. To: misterwhite (#6) A real bastardization of the Commerce Clause if I ever saw one. Stay at a different motel. Use a different baker. Geez Louise. Race is different. The black white racial issue caused the Civil War, killed a million people, caused the Great Migration, and rendered America wretched for nearly two centuries. By the 1960s one side had a sufficiently dominant political majority to simply impose the final solution on the other side: knock all of that shit off and shut up, forever. The point of Heart of Atlanta - by explicitly making it a Commerce Clause issue, was to utterly extinguish private rights to be racist, in a black white sense. You cannot enter the stream of commerce in America in the smallest town in the back of Alabama if you bar blacks. We know you're racist, but you cannot exercise that in business, because all commerce is interstate. That was the point. It was intended to be an absolute extinction of private business power on that issue. And it has worked out to be just that. BECAUSE of the black-white issue in America and its history. The whole racial segregation issue is a case apart, because of history. The gays and others have tried to extend the case law and logic of the racial cases to everything else, but when they do that it is really offensive to a great deal more of the population, and ultimately gets limited in important ways. There is a fundamental difference between not letting people rent a hotel room along the highway because the owners are bigots, and a baker not wanting to cook a cake for gays. The difference is that having black skin is a widespread thing that is not a moral or religious issue (and the people who claim it IS a religious issue are an evil minority who can be - and have been - completely legally disregarded - freedom of religion is also limited by the black-white thing in America, because of history), while gay marriage is a small beer thing that IS a religious issue.
#10. To: Justified (#0) Below is the Syllabus of the Masterpiece Cakeshop opinion. It is a synopsis of the Opinion, but is not part of the official opinion. The opinion of the court goes to page 18. Kagan and Gorsuch filed concurring opinions. Thomas, with whom Gorsuch joined, filed an opinion concurring in part and concurring in the judgment. Ginsburg, with whom Sotomayor joined, filed a dissenting opinion. Altogether, the opinions span 59 pages.
SUPREME COURT OF THE UNITED STATES Syllabus MASTERPIECE CAKESHOP, LTD., ET AL. v. COLORADO CIVIL RIGHTS COMMISSION ET AL. CERTIORARI TO THE COURT OF APPEALS OF COLORADO No. 16–111. Argued December 5, 2017—Decided June 4, 2018 Masterpiece Cakeshop, Ltd., is a Colorado bakery owned and operated by Jack Phillips, an expert baker and devout Christian. In 2012 he told a same-sex couple that he would not create a cake for their wedding celebration because of his religious opposition to same-sex marriages—marriages that Colorado did not then recognize—but that he would sell them other baked goods, e.g., birthday cakes. The couple filed a charge with the Colorado Civil Rights Commission (Commission) pursuant to the Colorado Anti-Discrimination Act (CADA),which prohibits, as relevant here, discrimination based on sexual orientation in a “place of business engaged in any sales to the public and any place offering services . . . to the public.” Under CADA’s administrative review system, the Colorado Civil Rights Division first found probable cause for a violation and referred the case to the Commission. The Commission then referred the case for a formal hearing before a state Administrative Law Judge (ALJ), who ruled in the couple’s favor. In so doing, the ALJ rejected Phillips’ First Amendment claims: that requiring him to create a cake for a same-sex wedding would violate his right to free speech by compelling him to exercise his artistic talents to express a message with which he disagreed and would violate his right to the free exercise of religion. Both the Commission and the Colorado Court of Appeals affirmed. Held: The Commission’s actions in this case violated the Free Exercise Clause. Pp. 9–18. (a) The laws and the Constitution can, and in some instances must,protect gay persons and gay couples in the exercise of their civil rights, but religious and philosophical objections to gay marriage are protected views and in some instances protected forms of expression. See Obergefell v. Hodges, 576 U. S. ___, ___. While it is unexceptional [2] services on the same terms and conditions as are offered to other members of the public, the law must be applied in a manner that is neutral toward religion. To Phillips, his claim that using his artistic skills to make an expressive statement, a wedding endorsement in his own voice and of his own creation, has a significant First Amendment speech component and implicates his deep and sincere religious beliefs. His dilemma was understandable in 2012, which was before Colorado recognized the validity of gay marriages performed in the State and before this Court issued United States v. Windsor, 570 U. S. 744, or Obergefell. Given the State’s position at the time, there is some force to Phillips’ argument that he was not unreasonable in deeming his decision lawful. State law at the time also afforded storekeepers some latitude to decline to create specific messages they considered offensive. Indeed, while the instant enforcement proceedings were pending, the State Civil Rights Division concluded in at least three cases that a baker acted lawfully in declining to create cakes with decorations that demeaned gay persons or gay marriages. Phillips too was entitled to a neutral and respectful consideration of his claims in all the circumstances of the case. Pp. 9–12. (b) That consideration was compromised, however, by the Commission’s treatment of Phillips’ case, which showed elements of a clear and impermissible hostility toward the sincere religious beliefs motivating his objection. As the record shows, some of the commissioners at the Commission’s formal, public hearings endorsed the view that religious beliefs cannot legitimately be carried into the public sphere or commercial domain, disparaged Phillips’ faith as despicable and characterized it as merely rhetorical, and compared his invocation of his sincerely held religious beliefs to defenses of slavery and the Holocaust. No commissioners objected to the comments. Nor were they mentioned in the later state-court ruling or disavowed in the briefs filed here. The comments thus cast doubt on the fairness and impartiality of the Commission’s adjudication of Phillips’ case. Another indication of hostility is the different treatment of Phillips’ case and the cases of other bakers with objections to anti-gay messages who prevailed before the Commission. The Commission ruled against Phillips in part on the theory that any message on the requested wedding cake would be attributed to the customer, not to the baker. Yet the Division did not address this point in any of the cases involving requests for cakes depicting anti-gay marriage symbolism. The Division also considered that each bakery was willing to sell other products to the prospective customers, but the Commission found Phillips’ willingness to do the same irrelevant. The State Court of [3] Appeals’ brief discussion of this disparity of treatment does not answer Phillips’ concern that the State’s practice was to disfavor the religious basis of his objection. Pp. 12–16. (c) For these reasons, the Commission’s treatment of Phillips’ case violated the State’s duty under the First Amendment not to base laws or regulations on hostility to a religion or religious viewpoint. The government, consistent with the Constitution’s guarantee of free exercise, cannot impose regulations that are hostile to the religious beliefs of affected citizens and cannot act in a manner that passes judgment upon or presupposes the illegitimacy of religious beliefs and practices. Church of Lukumi Babalu Aye, Inc. v. Hialeah, 508 U. S. 520. Factors relevant to the assessment of governmental neutrality include “the historical background of the decision under challenge, the specific series of events leading to the enactment or official policy in question, and the legislative or administrative history, including contemporaneous statements made by members of the decision making body.” Id., at 540. In view of these factors, the record here demonstrates that the Commission’s consideration of Phillips’ case was neither tolerant nor respectful of his religious beliefs. The Commission gave “every appearance,” id., at 545, of adjudicating his religious objection based on a negative normative “evaluation of the particular justification” for his objection and the religious grounds for it, id., at 537, but government has no role in expressing or even suggesting whether the religious ground for Phillips’ conscience-based objection is legitimate or illegitimate. The inference here is thus that Phillips’ religious objection was not considered with the neutrality required by the Free Exercise Clause. The State’s interest could have been weighed against Phillips’ sincere religious objections in a way consistent with the requisite religious neutrality that must be strictly observed. But the official expressions of hostility to religion in some of the commissioners’ comments were inconsistent with that requirement, and the Commission’s disparate consideration of Phillips’ case compared to the cases of the other bakers suggests the same. Pp. 16–18. 370 P. 3d 272, reversed.
#11. To: nolu chan (#10) I found two brief Tweet summaries, the second one from the baker.
Not the broader ruling the Right was hoping for.
#12. To: Justified, nolu chan (#0) Great News. NEXT STOP: Challenging institutionally enforced but un-constitutionally enforced/coerced "Affirmative Action", Quotas, and other "Special Rights" like "Hate" Crime, "Hate Laws, and select application thereof. ALL are based solely ON Race, Creed, Color, AND Sexual Orientation. Btw Nolu -- good to see you. Godspeed on your continued recuperation.
#13. To: nolu chan (#10) disparaged Phillips’ faith as despicable and characterized it as merely rhetorical, and compared his invocation of his sincerely held religious beliefs to defenses of slavery and the Holocaust. The race card whaT ... the HuTus --- did To The TuTsis the souThern PoverTy law agenda 100 of Thousands people bludgeoned - hacked To death MarxisT - African regime CHANGE love If you ... don't use exclamation points --- you should't be typeing ! Commas - semicolons - question marks are for girlie boys ! #14. To: Tooconservative, Liberator, Justified (#11)
Not the broader ruling the Right was hoping for. Not at all. The Court did not really decide the dispute between the baker and the customer. The Court decided that the proceedings before the Colorado Civil Rights Commission were fatally flawed by Commission prejudice, and exhibited disparate treatment when compared with other case rulings. The Court saw the need to invalidate the rulings of the Commission and the State court that enforced the Commission's order. Kennedy Opinion of the Court at page 18, (boldface added)
The official expressions of hostility to religion in some of the commissioners’ comments—comments that were not disavowed at the Commission or by the State at any point in the proceedings that led to affirmance of the order—were inconsistent with what the Free Exercise Clause requires. The Commission’s disparate consideration of Phillips’ case compared to the cases of the other bakers suggests the same. For these reasons, the order must be set aside. The Ginsburg dissenting opinion describes the nature of the cakes requested in the Jack case. Ginsburg dissent at pages 3-4: (boldface added)
I The winning skewering goes to Gorsuch, joined by Alito, concurring. At pages 8-10 of the Gorsuch concurring opinion, (boldface added)
Take the first suggestion first. To suggest that cakes with words convey a message but cakes without words do not—all in order to excuse the bakers in Mr. Jack’s case while penalizing Mr. Phillips—is irrational. Not even the Commission or court of appeals purported to rely on that distinction. Imagine Mr. Jack asked only for a cake with a symbolic expression against same-sex marriage rather than a cake bearing words conveying the same idea. Surely the Commission would have approved the bakers’ intentional wish to avoid participating in that message too. Nor can anyone reasonably doubt that a wedding cake without words conveys a message. Words or not and whatever the exact design, it celebrates a wedding, and if the wedding cake is made for a same-sex couple it celebrates a same-sex wedding. See 370 P. 3d, at 276 (stating that Mr. Craig and Mr. Mullins “requested that Phillips design and create a cake to celebrate their same-sex wedding”) (emphasis added). Like “an emblem or flag,” a cake for a same-sex wedding is a symbol that serves as “a short cut from mind to mind,” signifying approval of a specific “system, idea, [or] institution.” West Virginia Bd. of Ed. v. Barnette, 319 U. S. 624, 632 (1943).
#15. To: nolu chan (#14) (Edited) Not at all. The Court did not really decide the dispute between the baker and the customer. It is what I meant when I said this was a narrow ruling. It doesn't seem to apply to any other current cases that I know of. Apparently, the way they went after this one baker scared all the others off. But the larger issues of religious conscience versus requirements for equal public accommodation were not addressed at all. So I consider that about as narrow a ruling as they could make. As soon as I saw it was 7-2 with Breyer in the majority, I knew it had to be very narrow or Breyer wouldn't have joined in.
The winning skewering goes to Gorsuch, joined by Alito, concurring. At pages 8-10 of the Gorsuch concurring opinion, (boldface added) Gorsuch and Alito need a new hobby. : ) It's a damned cake, for God's sake.
#16. To: nolu chan, Y'ALL, tooconservative (#14) Eugene Volokh: ------ Eugene, as usual, has the definitive opinion on the case...
#17. To: Tooconservative (#15) It's a damned cake, for God's sake. This whole brouhaw is a fine example of why we should kill all lawyers. ;-)
#18. To: Jameson (#0) No cake for you faggot.
#19. To: nolu chan (#14) The problem is, the Commission didn’t play with the level of generality in Mr. Jack’s case in this way. Interesting point and breakdown.
Only by adjusting the dials just right—fine-tuning the level of generality up or down for each case based solely on the identity of the parties and the substance of their views—can you engineer the Commission’s outcome, handing a win to Mr. Jack’s bakers but delivering a loss to Mr. Phillips. Such results-driven reasoning [by liberal-Left anti-Christian-bigots] is improper. It is noted that agenda-driven Leftist-Lib-Dem judges in those infected States ALWAYS warp constitutional law and mangle common sense in order to advance the anti-1A, homofascist agenda. AT the expense of Christians and Conservatives. Exhibit "A" why the "United" States is no more and actually TWO "Unions". Thank God for Gorsuch and Alito.
#20. To: A K A Stone, Jameson (#18) Conservative counter-case demand and future lawsuit: Jameson behind his Starbucks counter MUST not only serve me a bowl of Alphabet cereal, it MUST spell out, "JESUS SAVES!" Otherwise it demonstrates "Christophobia".
#21. To: tpaine, redleghunter, tooconservative (#17) This whole brouhaw is a fine example of why we should kill all lawyers. ;-) Let's be more specific and say that all ACLU/SPLC lawyers be waterboarded, smacked in the head with a rolled-up Church bulletin until sufficiently dizzy, then served up a raw Crow Banquet, unable to leave UNTIL fully consumed. ;-)
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