Gay Wedding Cake Controversy Heads to Supreme Court

[DGUtley]

Gay Wedding Cake Controversy Heads to Supreme Court. The encounter between a same-sex couple and a Colorado baker lasted just a few seconds -- but the legal, political and social impact could extend for decades after the Supreme Court takes up their case on Tuesday. The justices will hear oral arguments in perhaps the most closely watched appeal so far this term, pitting religious conviction against anti-discrimination laws. At issue is the July 2012 encounter, when Charlie Craig and David Mullins of Denver visited Masterpiece Cakeshop to buy a custom-made wedding cake. Owner Jack 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.

It'll be interesting to see how the SC sorts this one out.

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2017...eme-court.html

[Kalkin]

Let's hope they do the right thing and recognize the basic right of humans to free association.

[Chris]

The court will find against. Phillips went after the wrong right, his baking a cake is not freedom of speech or religion, it is freedom of association. He should be able, for whatever reasons, be able to decide who he does business with.

[Ethereal]

This should be left up to the States. The SCOTUS should not be imposing its will on the entire country through judicial FIAT. That is the real issue here.

[Ethereal]

Let's hope they do the right thing and recognize the basic right of humans to free association.

No matter what decision they make, it will be the wrong one.

[DGUtley]

It's an interesting issue. If they rule against the baker in this case, the religious right will double down the next election, IMHO.

[Standing Wolf]

"We have never held that an individual's religious beliefs excuse him from compliance with an otherwise valid law prohibiting conduct that the State is free to regulate. On the contrary, the record of more than a century of our free exercise jurisprudence contradicts that proposition.

... Conscientious scruples have not, in the course of the long struggle for religious toleration, relieved the individual from obedience to a general law not aimed at the promotion or restriction of religious beliefs. The mere possession of religious convictions which contradict the relevant concerns of a political society does not relieve the citizen from the discharge of political responsibilities.

We first had occasion to assert that principle in Reynolds v. United States, 98 U.S. 145 (1879), where we rejected the claim that criminal laws against polygamy could not be constitutionally applied to those whose religion commanded the practice. "Laws," we said, are made for the government of actions, and while they cannot interfere with mere religious belief and opinions, they may with practices. . . . Can a man excuse his practices to the contrary because of his religious belief? To permit this would be to make the professed doctrines of religious belief superior to the law of the land, and in effect to permit every citizen to become a law unto himself."

- Justice Antonin Scalia, Employment Division v. Smith (1990)

https://www.law.cornell.edu/supremecourt/text/494/872

[Standing Wolf]

It's an interesting issue. If they rule against the baker in this case, the religious right will double down the next election, IMHO.

I think they will have to rule against the baker. The free speech argument is specious. Had the same-sex couple asked him to create a gay-themed wedding cake, or one with a message supporting same-sex marriage, and he refused, he would have won his case, just as others have (the t-shirt maker asked to print Gay Pride shirts comes to mind.) Here, he is simply being asked to make exactly the same product for one couple that he routinely makes for every other couple, solely because of who the customer is. That isn't free speech - it's discrimination.

[Kacper]

Gay Wedding Cake Controversy Heads to Supreme Court. The encounter between a same-sex couple and a Colorado baker lasted just a few seconds -- but the legal, political and social impact could extend for decades after the Supreme Court takes up their case on Tuesday. The justices will hear oral arguments in perhaps the most closely watched appeal so far this term, pitting religious conviction against anti-discrimination laws. At issue is the July 2012 encounter, when Charlie Craig and David Mullins of Denver visited Masterpiece Cakeshop to buy a custom-made wedding cake. Owner Jack 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.

It'll be interesting to see how the SC sorts this one out.

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2017...eme-court.html

They really have two choices--cower behind the constitutionality of the current public accommodation law or expand religious rights. That it was even called up suggests the latter, but who knows.

[Chris]

They really have two choices--cower behind the constitutionality of the current public accommodation law or expand religious rights. That it was even called up suggests the latter, but who knows.

Public accommodation law should be found unconstitutional.