Court Rules Kentucky Print Shop Has Right to Avoid Making Gay Pride T-shirts

[Common]

A Kentucky appellate court on Friday ruled that the Christian owner of a printing shop in Lexington had the right to refuse to make T-shirts promoting a local gay pride festival.
The dispute represents the latest court fight testing the limits of antidiscrimination protections for gays and lesbians following the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2015 landmark ruling legalizing gay marriage nationwide.
The cases have led to a number of state court rulings against Christian-owned businesses that refused to bake cakes, design floral arrangements or take portrait photographs for same-sex weddings.
The ruling by the Kentucky Court of Appeals favored the business owner. A crucial difference in this case was the expressive nature of the service denied: literally words on a shirt.
In a split vote, a three-judge panel concluded that the store, Hands on Originals, couldn’t be forced to print a message with which the owner disagreed.
The dispute started in 2012 when Gay and Lesbian Services Organization in Kentucky asked Hands on Originals to make T-shirts with the name and logo of a pride festival.
Blaine Adamson, owner of Hands on Originals, said he refused to print the shirts because it violated his business’s policy of not printing messages that endorse positions in conflict with his convictions.
Mr. Adamson offered examples of other orders he refused, such as shirts featuring the word “bitches” or a depiction of Jesus dressed as a pirate.
The gay-rights group filed a complaint with the Lexington Fayette Urban County Human Rights Commission, which in 2014 ordered Mr. Adamson to make the shirts.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/court-rules-kentucky-print-shop-has-right-to-avoid-making-gay-pride-t-shirts-1494634288

[Scrounger]

Remember a couple of years ago when a lesbian couple sued a bakery for not making a cake?

http://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/bakery-pays-135k-refusing-gay-wedding-cake-article-1.2479452

I see this becoming a federal issue for the courts to decide. We all know that Trump is pro-gay so we don't know what his Court is going to be like when this works its way to the Supreme Court.

[exotix]

Its a free country, if you want to lose money in business its your right ... LOL

[Common]

Courts have ruled against it before, there is a distinction here if you read the article that they based the decision on.

[Common]

Remember a couple of years ago when a lesbian couple sued a bakery for not making a cake?

http://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/bakery-pays-135k-refusing-gay-wedding-cake-article-1.2479452

I see this becoming a federal issue for the courts to decide. We all know that Trump is pro-gay so we don't know what his Court is going to be like when this works its way to the Supreme Court.

Yes there were other cases and they lost them, but the distinction used here was this

A crucial difference in this case was the expressive nature of the service denied: literally words on a shirt. The article mentions the bakery and floral business that denied service and lost.
In a split vote, a three-judge panel concluded that the store, Hands on Originals, couldn’t be forced to print a message with which the owner disagreed.

[Dr. Who]

A Kentucky appellate court on Friday ruled that the Christian owner of a printing shop in Lexington had the right to refuse to make T-shirts promoting a local gay pride festival.
The dispute represents the latest court fight testing the limits of antidiscrimination protections for gays and lesbians following the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2015 landmark ruling legalizing gay marriage nationwide.
The cases have led to a number of state court rulings against Christian-owned businesses that refused to bake cakes, design floral arrangements or take portrait photographs for same-sex weddings.
The ruling by the Kentucky Court of Appeals favored the business owner. A crucial difference in this case was the expressive nature of the service denied: literally words on a shirt.
In a split vote, a three-judge panel concluded that the store, Hands on Originals, couldn’t be forced to print a message with which the owner disagreed.
The dispute started in 2012 when Gay and Lesbian Services Organization in Kentucky asked Hands on Originals to make T-shirts with the name and logo of a pride festival.
Blaine Adamson, owner of Hands on Originals, said he refused to print the shirts because it violated his business’s policy of not printing messages that endorse positions in conflict with his convictions.
Mr. Adamson offered examples of other orders he refused, such as shirts featuring the word “bitches” or a depiction of Jesus dressed as a pirate.
The gay-rights group filed a complaint with the Lexington Fayette Urban County Human Rights Commission, which in 2014 ordered Mr. Adamson to make the shirts.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/court-rules-kentucky-print-shop-has-right-to-avoid-making-gay-pride-t-shirts-1494634288

I actually agree with the decision. As I said back in the cake situation, it is a very different thing to force a business to produce a cake or t-shirt that specifically advocates something with which they disagree. I would not expect a print shop or bakery to be forced to bake a cake or make a t-shirt endorsing the Klan if they were asked to do so and they fundamentally disagreed.

[Standing Wolf]

I actually agree with the decision. As I said back in the cake situation, it is a very different thing to force a business to produce a cake or t-shirt that specifically advocates something with which they disagree. I would not expect a print shop or bakery to be forced to bake a cake or make a t-shirt endorsing the Klan if they were asked to do so and they fundamentally disagreed.

I concur with the decision, as well. A t-shirt with words and graphics on it constitutes a message that the business owner is being asked to convey, regardless of his or her personal feelings or view. Had the baker who lost his case been asked to bake a cake that said "GAY MARRIAGE IS GOOD!", I'd have supported his right to refuse, too. The right to be served by a business as a member of the public does not include the right to make people say (or write) things they don't believe.

[Cletus]

What a bunch of bull I am reading in the posts here.

There is NO difference between what that printer was asked to do and what the baker was forced to do. I have to wonder how some of you can look in a mirror after saying it is okay to force the government to threaten and punish one business for acting in accordance with their beliefs and say it is okay for another business to refuse to do the same thing.

If you can't see that both businesses had the same objections and both business owners were trying to exercise their constitutionally protected rights, there is something seriously wrong with your cognitive abilities. The printer objected to the message he was being asked to print. The baker was objecting to the message he was being asked to send by baking the cake.

It was wrong to force the baker to violate his beliefs just as it was wrong to try to force the printer to violate his.

[Cletus]

Its a free country, if you want to lose money in business its your right ... LOL

That is probably the only thing you have ever said on this forum (that I have read) that is true.

[Ethereal]

I concur with the decision, as well. A t-shirt with words and graphics on it constitutes a message that the business owner is being asked to convey, regardless of his or her personal feelings or view. Had the baker who lost his case been asked to bake a cake that said "GAY MARRIAGE IS GOOD!", I'd have supported his right to refuse, too. The right to be served by a business as a member of the public does not include the right to make people say (or write) things they don't believe.

There is no "right" to be served by a business that doesn't want to serve you. Indeed, it is infringement on a right to force someone to associate against their will.

[Cletus]

There is no "right" to be served by a business that doesn't want to serve you. Indeed, it is infringement on a right to force someone to associate against their will.

Absolutely.

We did away with slavery in this country in 1865... well, unless you are a private businessman with strong religious beliefs.

[Ethereal]

We did away with slavery in this country in 1865...

Nominally, at least.


No Treason by Lysander Spooner (https://mises.org/library/no-treason-no-1)

...The principle on which the war was waged by the North was simply this: that men may rightfully be compelled to submit to and support a government that they do not want, and that resistance on their part makes them traitors and criminals.

No principle that is possible to be named can be more self-evidently false than this nor more self-evidently fatal to all political freedom. Yet it triumphed in the field, and is now assumed to be established. If it be really established, the number of slaves, instead of having been diminished by the war, has been greatly increased; for a man thus subjected to a government that he does not want is a slave.

And there is no difference, in principle — but only in degree — between political and chattel slavery. The former, no less than the latter, denies a man's ownership of himself and the products of his labor, and asserts that other men may own him and dispose of him and his property for their uses and at their pleasure...

[donttread]

A Kentucky appellate court on Friday ruled that the Christian owner of a printing shop in Lexington had the right to refuse to make T-shirts promoting a local gay pride festival.
The dispute represents the latest court fight testing the limits of antidiscrimination protections for gays and lesbians following the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2015 landmark ruling legalizing gay marriage nationwide.
The cases have led to a number of state court rulings against Christian-owned businesses that refused to bake cakes, design floral arrangements or take portrait photographs for same-sex weddings.
The ruling by the Kentucky Court of Appeals favored the business owner. A crucial difference in this case was the expressive nature of the service denied: literally words on a shirt.
In a split vote, a three-judge panel concluded that the store, Hands on Originals, couldn’t be forced to print a message with which the owner disagreed.
The dispute started in 2012 when Gay and Lesbian Services Organization in Kentucky asked Hands on Originals to make T-shirts with the name and logo of a pride festival.
Blaine Adamson, owner of Hands on Originals, said he refused to print the shirts because it violated his business’s policy of not printing messages that endorse positions in conflict with his convictions.
Mr. Adamson offered examples of other orders he refused, such as shirts featuring the word “bitches” or a depiction of Jesus dressed as a pirate.
The gay-rights group filed a complaint with the Lexington Fayette Urban County Human Rights Commission, which in 2014 ordered Mr. Adamson to make the shirts.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/court-rules-kentucky-print-shop-has-right-to-avoid-making-gay-pride-t-shirts-1494634288

WHAT! A sane court that believes I should be able to do business with customers of my choice? They might even have thought: Why the hell would anybody want people who disapprove of them to make them stuff?
Oh can you see the ultra lib panty punching fest this will cause? Do you think we could clarify the point by having a Aryan Brother force a black baker to make him a cake that says "I hate negroes" ?

[Peter1469]

These silly cultural issues need to be sidelined.


SJW- you live in the most free nation on earth. Don't shit on it.

[Common]

A democrat Hispanic friend went to a graphic artist and spent 200 to get a design created of trump and sessions standing on a wall shooting arrows at mexican women and children rushing it from the other side.
2 tshirt shops in the area would not print it. He went to orlando to get the Tshirts made
He said he expected to have places refuse to make the tshirts. He didnt make an issue of it.

[Common]

You take an issue to an extreme like forcing business to create something that symbolizes something they are against it eventually has a reverse effect. Over reach can kill a righteous cause

[donttread]

Its a free country, if you want to lose money in business its your right ... LOL


Which is exactly why this sort of thing will be limited.

[Jezebel]

Well, a shift in rulings as we have seen in the past this one favoring the rights of the private business. In a nutshell the owners moral and religious convictions by the work, he was being asked to produce. Instead of respecting that the persons sued in an attempt to force him to violate those convictions. The court said no one can force another to do that. I happen to agree, the customer can go elsewhere.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/court-rules-kentucky-print-shop-has-right-to-avoid-making-gay-pride-t-shirts-1494634288?mod=cx_picks&cx_navSource=cx_picks&cx_tag=poptarget&cx_artPos=1#cxrecs_s


Court Rules Kentucky Print Shop Has Right to Avoid Making Gay Pride T-shirts
The owner argued that producing the shirts promoting a gay pride festival conflicted with his beliefs

A Kentucky appellate court on Friday ruled that the Christian owner of a printing shop in Lexington had the right to refuse to make T-shirts promoting a local gay pride festival.

The dispute represents the latest court fight testing the limits of antidiscrimination protections for gays and lesbians following the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2015 landmark ruling legalizing gay marriage nationwide.

The cases have led to a number of state court rulings against Christian-owned businesses that refused to bake cakes, design floral arrangements or take portrait photographs for same-sex weddings.

The ruling by the Kentucky Court of Appeals favored the business owner. A crucial difference in this case was the expressive nature of the service denied: literally words on a shirt.

In a split vote, a three-judge panel concluded that the store, Hands on Originals, couldn’t be forced to print a message with which the owner disagreed.

The dispute started in 2012 when Gay and Lesbian Services Organization in Kentucky asked Hands on Originals to make T-shirts with the name and logo of a pride festival.

Blaine Adamson, owner of Hands on Originals, said he refused to print the shirts because it violated his business’s policy of not printing messages that endorse positions in conflict with his convictions.

Mr. Adamson offered examples of other orders he refused, such as shirts featuring the word “bitches” or a depiction of Jesus dressed as a pirate.

The gay-rights group filed a complaint with the Lexington Fayette Urban County Human Rights Commission, which in 2014 ordered Mr. Adamson to make the shirts.

Friday’s decision affirmed an earlier ruling from a lower court. The commission, which brought the appeal, said the store was in violation of a local “fairness” ordinance banning discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation in places of public accommodation.

The Kentucky Court of Appeals, one level below the state’s Supreme Court, disagreed, ruling that the conduct by the business wasn’t discrimination, rather a decision not to promote certain speech.

One judge on the panel dissented, saying he thought Mr. Adamson’s shop had engaged in “deliberate and intentional discriminatory conduct.”

In other lawsuits against religious business owners, courts have rejected First Amendment defenses.


Free speech arguments failed to persuade New Mexico’s highest court, which ruled in 2013 that the owners of an Albuquerque wedding photography company couldn’t refuse to photograph a same-sex ceremony.

Likewise, Washington state’s highest court this year ruled against a florist who wouldn’t prepare floral arrangements for a gay couple’s wedding.

In 2015, a Colorado appeals court ruled against a Christian baker who refused to design a cake for a gay wedding. The owner, Masterpiece Cakeshop, has asked the U.S. Supreme Court to hear the case. The high court hasn’t decided whether to hear it.

Business owners in those cases had argued too that providing their services expressed a message.

The courts are making a distinction “between material that is seen as fundamentally expressive, like a message-bearing T-shirt would be, and material not seen as expressive, such as a cake,” said law professor Eugene Volokh, a First Amendment expert at the University of California, Los Angeles.

Attorneys for Mr. Adamson said the ruling was a victory for free speech.

“Today’s decision is a victory for printers and other creative professionals who serve all people but cannot promote all messages,” said Jim Campbell, senior counsel at the Alliance Defending Freedom, said in a statement. The group represented Mr. Adamson in the litigation.

Raymond Sexton, executive director of the county commission, said he disagreed with Friday’s decision and is reviewing legal options.

“The sole reason the service was denied was based on the fact they are a group that advocates on behalf of the gay and lesbian community,” he said.

Write to Jacob Gershman at jacob.gershman@wsj.com

[Standing Wolf]

I can't find the thread right now, but this case was discussed here extensively the other day. As I recall, this particular ruling was deemed correct pretty much across the board. Printing a message on a t-shirt is unequivocally "speech" - that makes it different.

[Jezebel]

I can't find the thread right now, but this case was discussed here extensively the other day. As I recall, this particular ruling was deemed correct pretty much across the board. Printing a message on a t-shirt is unequivocally "speech" - that makes it different.

Oh, sorry everyone. Feel free to delete, those in power.

[Chris]

Similar threads merged.

[Chris]

While wearing a tee shirt with a slogan can be considered free speech, certainly, the printing of tee shirts cannot. It is instead part of doing business and the right to enter freely into contract and exchange. That right is being harmed if the freedom to choose is replace by forced labor.

[Jezebel]

Its a free country, if you want to lose money in business its your right ... LOL

Wrong, I would be more likely to give my business to an establishment that doesn't to cater people with sick, deviant sexual behaviors.

[Captain Obvious]

Finally sanity

[Chris]

Its a free country, if you want to lose money in business its your right ... LOL


Wrong, I would be more likely to give my business to an establishment that doesn't to cater people with sick, deviant sexual behaviors.


For the first time in 5 years I agree with exo, at least in the sense that a business should be free to choose and by such choices lose exo's business and gain jez's. I would not do business with such a buiness either.

Let society decide, let them vote with their dollars.

[Dangermouse]

Refusing to print a political/hate message (however mild) is one thing. A cake is a cake. No message, just bake it ffs.

[Jezebel]

For the first time in 5 years I agree with exo, at least in the sense that a business should be free to choose and by such choices lose exo's business and gain jez's. I would not do business with such a buiness either. Let society decide, let them vote with their dollars.

A few years ago the boycott on Chick-Fil-A backfired. Liberals wanted to shut the place down because Mr. Tracy supports traditional marriage. I drove past a Chick-Fil-A every day and had never been to one until I heard about the boycott. The crowds were unbelievable, the place was running out of chicken.
I was more than thrilled to be a part of the team that shut down the left wing terrorists.

[Chris]

A few years ago the boycott on Chick-Fil-A backfired. Liberals wanted to shut the place down because Mr. Tracy supports traditional marriage. I drove past a Chick-Fil-A every day and had never been to one until I heard about the boycott. The crowds were unbelievable, the place was running out of chicken.
I was more than thrilled to be a part of the team that shut down the left wing terrorists.

So it all works out. The problem, as I see it, only arises when one side appeals to the government grant favors by picking winners and losers.

[Chris]

Refusing to print a political/hate message (however mild) is one thing. A cake is a cake. No message, just bake it ffs.

The print and the baking are both acts of voluntary exchange. Why would you want to force exchange?

[Standing Wolf]

The print and the baking are both acts of voluntary exchange. Why would you want to force exchange?

Why an organized society places certain requirements and restrictions on those who conduct business with the public within its borders has been explained to you on any number of occasions recently. Why do you keep asking the same question and then ignoring the answer?

[Cletus]

Refusing to print a political/hate message (however mild) is one thing. A cake is a cake. No message, just bake it ffs.

There is no difference.

[Mister D]

Why an organized society places certain requirements and restrictions on those who conduct business with the public within its borders has been explained to you on any number of occasions recently. Why do you keep asking the same question and then ignoring the answer?
Why a business should be forced to serve customers hasn't been explained.

[mike2141]

that's great