UPDATE: June 26, 2017 at 12:08 p.m.
Two years after a Colorado bakery lost a discrimination case for refusing to create a cake for a same-sex couple, the Supreme Court has agreed to hear its appeal.
Back in 2012, David Mullins and Charlie Craig filed discrimination charges against Masterpiece Cakeshop in Denver after owner Jack Phillips refused to bake a cake for their wedding. The couple won before a civil rights commission and in court. Then, in 2015, Phillips filed an appeal but the Colorado appeals court ruled against him, saying: "Masterpiece does not convey a message supporting same-sex marriages merely by abiding by the law and serving its customers equally," the court said.
Now, in a brief to the Supreme Court, Phillips' lawyers are appealing once again. This time, they claim that "he is happy to create other items for gay and lesbian clients" but that his faith requires him "to use his artistic talents to promote only messages that align with his religious beliefs."
The brief goes on to explain that Phillips also "declines lucrative business by not creating goods that contain alcohol or cakes celebrating Halloween and other messages his faith prohibits, such as racism, atheism, and any marriage not between one man and one woman."
The couple's lawyers have responded quite aptly, saying: "It is no answer to say that Mullins and Craig could shop somewhere else for their wedding cake, just as it was no answer in 1966 to say that African-American customers could eat at another restaurant."
They further argue that, "if religious motivation exempted businesses from anti-discrimination laws, government would be powerless to protect all Americans from the harms of invidious discrimination ... all civil rights laws would be vulnerable to such claims where the discrimination was motivated by religion."
Essentially, as the New York Times points out, the case will be "a major test of a clash between laws that ban businesses open to the public from discriminating based on sexual orientation and claims of religious freedom." And the results could leave a dramatic effect on civil rights.
ORIGINAL POST: August 13, 2015 at 4:36 p.m.
A Colorado bakery cannot refuse to make wedding cakes for same-sex couples, the state's Appeals Court said on Thursday. The ruling is being hailed as another victory in the fight for equality.
The incident that led to the ruling happened in 2012, when David Mullins and Charlie Craig visited Masterpiece Cakeshop in the Denver suburb of Lakewood to order a cake for their wedding reception, according to the ABC affiliate in Denver. (The couple was married in Massachusetts but planned to celebrate their nuptials in Colorado, the Associated Press reports.) When the shop's owner, Jack Phillips, refused to sell them a wedding cake because of his religious beliefs, Craig sued.
The feud has drug out over the intervening years. Colorado's Civil Rights Commission ruled in 2014 that Phillips discriminated against the couple by violating a state law that says businesses must serve customers regardless of their sexual orientation. He was ordered to reverse his policy or face fines. Phillips then appealed the ruling, saying the order violated his First Amendment rights, according to Denver's ABC affiliate.
Phillips has maintained that he would sell the couple baked goods for other occasions, just not their wedding. "I'll make you birthday cakes, shower cakes, sell you cookies and brownies," he told, according to court documents. "I just don't make cakes for same-sex weddings."
The Colorado ruling comes on the same day a Kentucky clerk turned away a gay couple seeking a marriage license, despite a court mandating the clerk issue the license.
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