Supreme Court rules with Colorado baker
According to Fox News, the US Supreme Court sided with a Colorado baker in a 7-2 decision today. The baker had refused to bake a cake for a same-sex couple’s wedding because of the baker’s strongly-held religious beliefs;
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.
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.
NPR calls the 7-2 decision “narrow”. I’m calling it “nearly unanimous”. Ruth Bader Ginsberg and Sonia Sotomayor dissented.
In a case brought by a Colorado baker, the court ruled by a 7-2 vote that he did not get a fair hearing on his complaint because the Colorado Civil Rights Commission demonstrated a hostility to religion in its treatment of his case.
Writing for the case, Justice Anthony Kennedy said that while it is unexceptional that Colorado law “can protect gay persons in acquiring products and services on the same terms and conditions that are offered to other members of the public, the law must be applied in a manner that is neutral toward religion.”
He said that while in this case the Colorado baker, Jack Phillips, understandably had difficulty in knowing where to draw the line, because the state law at the time affording store keepers some latitude to decline to create specific messages they considered offensive.
Of course, there were bakeries who would have sold a cake to the couple, but their intentions were to shove acceptance of their lifestyle down the throats of people like Jack Phillips.
Category: Who knows
7-2! That’s just about as decisive as the SCOTUS can get. That’s very telling.
Yes, the crypto-communist progtard justices were the only ones to dissent. Let’s not forget that Justice Ginsburg was the head of the American Communist Libtard Union (ACLU) before she was appointed to the U.S. Supreme Court.
That’s just another stunt from the Really Exceptional Trump Acceptance Resistance Disorder Operatives (RETARDOs) in the D-rat owned and operated mess media.
Outstanding news! Next decision should break Government Union’s back.
👍👍👍
Ditto
“Next decision should break Government Union’s back.”
One can only hope.
What did it cost them to finally get justice?
Hopefully they will ask for the court costs (like Heller/McDonald)
Well, it’s logical to ask why these people went to him instead of to a bakery that would accept their business, isn’t it?
I never viewed this as anything but trampling on the civil rights of a business owner to refuse service to someone at will.
It would also be nice if NPR took a strong dose of reality and stopped calling a spoon a duck. 7 to 2 in a decision is a 5 point gap, not a narrow margin.
This is in the district I used to work… there’s a gay run bakery less than 5 miles away… this had nothing to do with a cake, it was all about a pair of militant gays trying to make a point..
This was a case of discrimination. If it was not ok to have drinking fountains separated by race when there only a few feet from each other, then why is it acceptable for there to be a service separated by sexual orientation when the distance is over 5 miles to obtain the same service?
One sees an act of discrimination, another sees an act on conscience.
The couple can still buy anything in his shop. The baker just refuses to make something against his beliefs. His shop his beliefs. He’s not stopping them from buying anything. Other’s rights don’t trump your rights.
Ginsberg and Sotomayor are truly moonbat hags. Even Kagan came down on the right side of this!
I wonder what RBG’s BAC was when she voted?
She still has blood? I thought she’s been mainlining formaldehyde since 1982.
Even a blind Supreme pig finds an acorn now and then….
Yep, was watching CNN at gym and they too had called it a “narrow” ruling…maybe they meant the way it was worded afforded other courts much future latitude…clearly it was not a narrow 5/4 split…
I think NPR may be referring to the SCOTUS’s legal rationale in overturning the CO court decision when they’re referring to a “narrow” decision, Jonn – not the SCOTUS vote.
The opinion was quite limited in scope (“narrow”). They ruled that the man didn’t get a fair hearing by the CO Civil Rights Commission. They could have issued a much broader decision by ruling that businesses have the right to refuse service based on religious grounds, but they didn’t do that.
Just my non-lawyer $0.02 worth.
I think your two cents is right on the money, Hondo, as it usually is.
What Hondo said – it was in reference to the scope of the decision not the count of the actual SCOTUS votes on the topic. Per breitbart.com – The Court left open for another case the broader question of whether the government can force people of faith to participate in same-sex weddings when the government does not openly show open hostility to their religious beliefs
Precisely.
Sea Dragon, Esq.
Hondo is correct, it is the scope of the decision that is narrow.
Businesses in Colorado do NOT have the right to discriminate on the basis of sexual orientation, among other things.
Now when it comes to something that is created as, essentially, a work of art then it may, under some circumstances, be permissible but as a general rule, if you are a business that is open to the public you cannot refuse services to someone because you don’t approve of their lifestyle, religion, skin color, ethnicity, and so on. For example, you can’t say “get out of my fly shop, homo, I don’t sell fishing gear to queers.”
What the SCOTUS held here was that the Colorado court’s actions were impermissibly hostile to the baker’s religious beliefs, and those are the grounds on which they overturned the ruling.
AFAIK SCOTUS did not say explicitly whether or not the baker could legally refuse to provide services to the gay couple.
The thing id, he didn’t refuse services. Hd told them he’d sell them anything in his case, he just wouldn’t use his artistic ability to create a new cake for a same sex wedding, since that went against his religious beliefs…
I guess that I’ll have to stop making my weekly demands that the local halal meat shop for pork chops.
Yes they are saying narrow because the ruling applies to this case and other cases made the same way. Other states enforce their anti religious policies in different ways.
The thing I find interesting is that there are no Halal markets in the dock for not producing pork products.
It is very telling who a law is enforced against.
Discrimination is against people, not products.
If the local Halal market said “we won’t sell to you because you’re Christian” they would be subject to prosecution or lawsuit under the same laws.
You can’t have your cake and it too.
And there you have it.
I guess that’s a signal to the LGBTQRSTUVWXYZ crowd to open some bakeries of their own in Colorado (and where ever else they find a need to do so).
I prefer that acronym LGBTQOMGWTFBBQ…
LGBTQWERTY
Believe someone from CO posted that there is a bakery less than 5 miles away which openly advertises as being gay friendly. Given Denver’s swing to the left politically, I would be more surprised if there wasn’t one within two miles.
Yep, two guys bakery i believe is the name, big rainbow flag out front…Not any confusion as to where they stand..
Absolutely nothing narrow about 7-2
WTF or who da Fack came up with that
See Hondo’s comment above – ‘narrow’ speaks to the nature of the ruling, not the vote difference. It’s like how ‘accuracy’ and ‘precision’ are often conflated, but they mean two separate things. You can have a very inaccurate, but very precise weapon. You can also have a very narrow, yet even unanimous court decision.
Good thing this turned out this way. See, it’s somewhat plausible to force somebody to make a cake. However, it’s less plausible to force them to make a ‘good’ cake.
I think as usual this queer-queer duo were looking for a lawsuit. If they were indeed well meaning, they would call local bakeries and simply ask if they will make a cake for a same sex oddity. Then go to the one run by the four or five queens that love decorating cakes. But no, they find one that uses the fish symbol, or says Christian Owned Business, in their yellow pages ad and lock their radar on them.
Ginsburg dissented, but chose not to elaborate to much due to continuously maintaining a BAC higher than .24
Manischewitz wine on an IV drip
Whoa … mainlining …
I always wanted to find a bakery owned by a gay person and ask them to bake a cake for the Westboro Baptist Church, and sue the piss out of them when they refuse just to prove a point.
Alas, as the ancient proverb says, “ain’t nobody got time for that.”
That’s funny. Thx for the chuckle.
On the other hand, what if they agreed, and added a little extra cream in the frosting.
I’d give it to the Westboro Baptist Church.
Better yet, go to a Muzzie bakery and have them bake a cake with a depiction of Mohammed on it…
…for a Ramadan party (or something)
Or DEMAND that they bake a cake in the shape of a Star of David for a Bar Mitzvah! I myself wouldn’t mind going into a muzzie-owned deli and demanding a bacon sandwich!
MADE WITH BACON ! !
I think I also heard someone discussing in the background (talk radio while at work) about the 1A, “prohibiting the free exercise thereof” (religion).
I don’t know if this helps the Kleins in Portland, Or. I think they already lost their shop because of the 135K award to the lesbians.
https://www.statesmanjournal.com/story/news/2017/12/28/oregon-court-upholds-135-000-fine-portion-ruling-against-bakery-owners-gay-wedding-cake-case/985096001/
My wife and I have gay friends. We had a really nice party at their really nice home. The Dr. That works with my wife tried to kiss me on the cheek, I leaned out and stuck out my hand. He said let’s do this the old way and we shook hands. He is a retired Navy commander who worked as a psychiatrist for the CDCR in
California.
Never pushed his gay on us.
I truly don’t care if someone is gay, it’s when they wave their lifestyle in my face while demanding that I completely and openly embrace it that I have an issue. In this case the gay couple was doing just that.
Yeah, it didn’t take long for the request for tolerance to become a demand for acceptance.
Yeah, SJWs seem to forget that “tolerance” is NOT a synonym for “acceptance as normal”.
The former can be mandated by law, but the latter is a matter of individual choice (and in many cases, of conscience).
Could not possibly care less who somebody is married to or sleeps with, so long as it’s not shoved in my face and not used to advance an agenda like this case clearly was. My SJW son called me a homophobe because I agreed with the decision, until I told him about the three months my brother (who I was sure was gay long before he knew) spent on my couch after my dad threw him out of the house after he came out. Love it when the SJW can just stand there with a stupid look on their face, mouth hanging open trying to think of something to say.
Let’s ALL go to Halal Bakeries and order BIG GAY CAKES made with BACON, with 2 grooms Butt F’ing on the top of the cake.
Gay Unicorns with RAINBOWS shooting out of their butts, Carpet Munching going on too!
Yeah…….the gays are out there now doing that and trying to put the Muslim Bakery’s out of business………