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In Big Ruling, SCOTUS Endorses Freedom Over Compulsion
The Supreme Court upheld the First Amendment Monday, ruling in favor of Jack Phillips, owner of Masterpiece Cakes in Lakewood, CO. In a narrowly crafted 7-2 opinion, the court ruled that the Colorado Civil Rights Commission demonstrated hostility to Phillips’s religious beliefs.
Although Justice Anthony Kennedy’s majority opinion was full of the woke posturing we’ve come to expect, had this case gone the other way, religious liberty would have suffered greatly. This ruling was a necessary brushback pitch to overreaching bureaucrats trying to stamp out diversity of thought and belief.
It would be ludicrous for government to force Jewish artists to create paintings celebrating Easter or force atheist artists to promote Hindu beliefs. Either would be as offensive as forcing Muslim bakers to cater a pork barbecue.
The same goes for Colorado insisting that a traditional Christian create cakes celebrating weddings that go against his beliefs. In fact, there are all sorts of occassions Phillips won’t endorse.
“He has declined to participate in Halloween,” his attorney said. “He doesn’t do cakes that are anti-American. Jack has even declined cakes that celebrate divorce. He has declined to do cakes that would be offensive or derogatory to individuals — including LGBT individuals.”
Of course, there might be a bakery down the street from Phillips that will make cakes supporting all those things. That’s how freedom works. But no artist or baker should be compelled by the government to create against his will.
Lost in these broad fights of the culture war are the individuals affected. You can learn more about Jack Phillips here:
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Published in Law, Religion & Philosophy
I don’t think your headline is quite accurate, Jon. SCOTUS decided against the blatant anti-religious bias of the anti-discrimination commission. It did not rule explicitly in favor freedom of conscience. The narrow crafting of the decision leaves open the distinct possibility that a more subtle anti-discrimination commission will win the next case against a Christian baker who refuses to express approval of same-sex marriage.
Like the rest of the battles against the Left (including Trump’s election), this is a temporary reprieve.
But it’s considerably better than a defeat, and even though they kicked the can down the road, it does seem like the SCOTUS majority will be more open to the notion of allowing freedom of association to govern such interactions in the marketplace in the future.
None of this is a bad thing.
Here’s to hoping Trump gets to replace a couple more judges on SCOTUS, some of the Progressives are more then a little long in the tooth….
Looks like Samantha Bee is going to have to return to her bully pulpit and call Justice Kagan out for being a feckless ladypart, in 5-4-3-2-1… (Not holding my breath…)
Thanks so much, Jon! The video was beautiful. It would have been so easy for Jack to back down, in the face of people who need to ram down everyone’s throat what they consider the correct thing. But this good man refused to do that. It speaks to what America is all about. God Bless Jack Phillips!!
I agree with most of this, but not with the phrasing of it. The headline is somewhat misleading.
Cato disagrees.
It’s not as broad a ruling as I hoped for and Kennedy’s reasoning and rhetoric at points is downright terrible. He’s clearly signaling that he’s not interested in border relgious freedom protections.
The fight continues.
Agreed entirely. This was a stay of execution not a reversal.
Jon,
For those who were willing to accept the alternative to voting for Trump, I would make this exhibit A in my recommendation for reconsidering. Without Gorsuch, this decision doesn’t happen. Kennedy’s vanity would easily overcome any good sense. Even so it was very close.
We need one more appointment at the level of Gorsuch. We need to win this mid-term election.
Halleluyah.
Regards,
Jim
Gorsuch’s and Thomas’s opinions repay reading. The dissent (and the majority opinion) not so much.
You can find the (PDF) judgment here.
The good (but not the law) from Justice Gorsuch’s concurring opinion:
The bad (not yet the law, being dictum) from Justice Kennedy’s opinion for the majority:
The latter does not bode well for cases involving marriage venues for example.
The selection of Kennedy to write such a narrow opinion leads me to speculate that Roberts had his hands full on this one. I don’t believe there was any way a broader 5-4 ruling in favor of Phillips was in the cards, and any attempt to force that could well have gone the other way, with Kennedy writing a different opinion.
Thomas wrote a very necessary opinion, IMO– the “star” of all of them. We’ll have to disagree on Gorsuch’s windy prose.
Right, but my point stands. It was not a decision favoring freedom; it was against anti-religious bias in government. Any decision that gets two left wing justices should be viewed skeptically by liberty-loving conservatives.
I have no disagreement with your perspective. We should also remember that Kennedy, after Lawrence and Obergefell, is properly viewed as strong on gay rights. So it seems a logical question to wonder why he was assigned this opinion. I’d say very possibly because neither Roberts, Alito, Thomas, or Gorsuch would write it, and because the opinion they would write would not have been a majority ruling. Here, as has been noted, we have a limited decision by Kennedy that gives some cover to Breyer and Kagan.
The decision seems to reflect a schizophrenia on this issue within the court’s reasoning, especially since two liberals who had voted for the majority in Obergefell joined the majority here. If someone refused to bake a cake for a black wedding, or a black-white wedding, and cited his religious or moral beliefs, how far would he get? So the law now views race and sexual orientation as protected classes, but the former is more protected than the latter. On what grounds is such a distinction made? This is what happens when the court politicizes itself as it did in Obergefell, and tries to impose consensus when it hasn’t happened politically. They wanted gay marriage, and they imposed it, but without being willing to follow the logic to its conclusion. Civil rights in the racial arena has been enacted legislatively at both the national and state levels. Not so with sexual orientation. So now it’s kinda-sorta protected, which is exactly what you would expect when there isn’t much of a national political consensus on the issue.
Which is why the next line of attack will be based on the immutability of homosexuality:
The majority ruling written by Kennedy is narrow because Colorado did not protect the baker’s civil rights. Kennedy wrote,
Even going back to arguments in December (AP story in SeattleTimes online):
Given that this illustrates an animus by the CCRC, it would seem more appropriate to say their behavior was hateful than to say the baker was being hateful.
Does anyone else have a hankering for cake or is it just me?
I haven’t read the dissent yet, but given the outrageous conduct of the CCRC (as Kennedy noted, they are supposed to protect people from discrimination on the basis of religion as well), I am a little surprised that an opinion as narrowly crafted as this, and with some landmines for religious liberty in the future, didn’t attract an even stronger vote. I guess I will have to read Ginsburg’s dissent to see why she thought it was okay to compare not selling cakes with the holocaust.
I’m grateful for this decision today, but I don’t think the left is going to stop its relentless attacks anytime soon.
Picked up USA Today at the hotel desk today. According to them, “Same-Sex Marriage Ruling Three Year Later: Protections for LGBT familes are in peril”! Because of states with religious exemption laws. At their website they call the cake ruling “UnAmerican”. I forget, 3 years ago, was their headline “Same-Sex Marriage Ruling: Protections for Religious Liberty in peril”?
One can’t even the read the Sports section in USA Today anymore–which used to be the best thing in the rag–for fear of running across a pro-Kaepernick rant. It’s worth less than what the hotels charge.
I really appreciate that instead of entering a wide-reaching overwhelming decision, the Supreme Court entered a more detailed nuanced opinion that resolved the issues before it, and allowed the concurrences to battle out the larger issues.
7-2 is a huge win; the irony is that Justice Kennedy had written an opinion that struck down a Colorado state law that had banned municipalities from enacting protections for homosexuals in Romer v. Evans in 1996, well before Lawrence v. Texas in 2002.
Male Supreme Court justices voted unanimously for freedom.
Interesting way to receive the hate…
And the rationale used by Kennedy will be turned around and used as a spear to take down Trump’s travel ban.
Interesting thought, except the government is required to be a neutral decision maker of religious liberty claims because they are protected liberties under the First Amendment. No one has the right to immigrate. At least not yet.
Note the following from Justice Kennedy’s opinion:
I have another solution for Christian cake-bakers. Put up a sign that says something like, “All cakes provided by us will display a cross or bible citation or quote chosen by us, suitably blended into any design.”