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Guess What? I Own a Monopoly!
In another convoluted ruling against a Christian refusing service to LBGTs because of religious beliefs, a three-judge panel came up with a doozy. Here’s the looney statement from the article:
[Judge] Briscoe asserted that Smith has something ‘similar to a monopoly’ over her own creative talents.
In other words, web designers, cake bakers, artists, etc., have a monopoly on their own talents, thus any creative person must provide the good or service because it cannot be obtained anywhere else.
No doubt the case will go before the full panel. In fact, almost all controversial cases end up going before the full panel, which makes me question why we even bother with three-judge panels.
Published in Politics
Three-judge panels know that they will be reviewed if they make a bad decision, so if they don’t like one side they can rule against them, get praise from their cronies, and cause the losing party to go to extra expense to continue the fight. The process is the punishment.
There has to be a remedy for this. Pistols at ten paces?
Behind the cathedral at dawn!
Too bad we can’t give them a one-star rating :-)
I’m not sure why an independent contractor can’t decide on her own clients? This is the craziest ruling ever, and I don’t see how it can stand, because there’s really no limit on what a business must be required to do if someone asks. Don’t care to work on someone’s pr0n site? The law says YOU MUST!
A court is siding with compelled speech. Interesting and scary. The logic applies to everyone.
What irks me is that there are no cases involving a Klansman asking a black baker to make a KKK wedding cake, or Muslims asking a Jewish web designer for a “Death To Israel!” web site. Better yet, how about a Democrat baker being forced to bake a “Biden Lost-Trump Won” cake? So far, all of these test cases are one-sided.
Even if religion isn’t involved, there’s the matter of good taste vs. poor taste. Most bakers probably wouldn’t bake something with cuss words on it, or that contains obscene imagery.
Regardless, the idea that a single creative person is a self-contained monopoly is absurb. In theory, I could force Kanye West to write “Stad rap” songs against his will . . .
I know. I can force a particular individual to provide a service for me because he is a unique person . . .
Yup. When your opponent is (1) a lawyer, (2) filthy rich, or (3) the government or government-adjacent (I’m thinking of Michael Mann here) they can torture you almost without limit.
I lightly read the actual court decision (i.e., not just news and opinion summaries of the decision). The court decision acknowledges that it is authorizing “compelled speech.” Yes, that logic can be applied to compel speech (and service) from anyone, not just businesses, freelancers, or independent contractors, since every person has a unique set of capabilities.
[I found it interesting that much of the jurisdictional and procedural discussion in the decision acknowledged that support or opposition to same sex marriage is unrelated to discrimination for or against homosexual persons, completely undermining the “logic” of the Obergefell policy decree and other court decisions forcing the policy of same sex “marriage” onto the public.]
Once again because Justice Roberts insisted on an extremely narrow ruling in the Masterpiece Cakes case we are left with a onesie-twosie approach to getting our free speech and free exercise rights back. This is sheer madness.
How do you know he wouldn’t willingly write them? If you read him some of yr comic genius pieces, he might be more than happy to oblige.
I always wonder if the flavors of a compelled wedding cake might end up being “slightly off,” right?
And would someone really wanna upset an experienced web designer? If it was me, and if some of my more illustrious computer tweakers weren’t long departed to the Great Video Game in the sky, I’d be so apologetic and solicitous of the business compelling me, that they’d never suspect the back door implanted via code, taking some extra profit every time they make a sale on their website.
There have been times I’ve been tempted to write disparaging comments about people in 2-point type along the margins of the newspapers I typeset.
And yet a service with a monopoly audience (Twitter, facebook) somehow can’t be compelled to allow a President to utilize the service.
Twitter and Facebook should have to bake the cake.
Video of Stad back in the day:
“any creative person”…which would open the door to endless litigation about which jobs are and are not “creative.”
When judges display contempt for the Constitution, inventing law to serve their own political preferences…
Steven Crowder tried the cake bit with some Muslims:
Would Kanye to have perform the Stad rap too?
Sounds like slavery.
Yes, ma’am! That’s where I’d go to settle this.
Good idea. Why make it time-consuming for those who will need to bury the bodies?
So does this mean that a sculptor could be compelled to create a 10-foot phallus in granite if asked to do so? Could a lawyer or a political consultant be required to take on clients that he doesn’t want to take on? Would a law firm be required to take on a civil action that it doesn’t want to represent?
And if a producer wants to make a movie with an explicitly pro-life message, can they compel any actors and actresses to act for them? How about a movie that glamorizes Donald Trump?
It seems to me that in the real world you don’t go to a creative guy who disagrees with your vision, because you know he won’t to as good a job as the one who shares your vision and is enthusiastic about it. You see tremendous creative differences with film directors all the time, and he wastes your time and money, before your fire him. You don’t go to a guy who tapes a banana on a wall, to do your portrait, because he isn’t interested in it.
Why would anyone want to go to a Christian baker for a gay party cake? It’s all political. And if the Christian baker doesn’t do a smash-up job, you sue him for doing substandard work, because he’s “homophobic”.
And specifically regarding actors, they pick and choose what parts they want to play and what director they will fork with, and even how they will portray their character. You can’t make an actor work for you.
I don’t get any of this.
Added: By the way, these were not rhetorical questions I was asking in #24, I really would like to know how the law works in this.
Oddly, lawyer ethics seems to be moving in the opposite direction. Professional ethical standards used encourage lawyers to represent unpopular clients with legitimate legal needs. In recent years lawyers have begun putting a lot of pressure on each other not to represent unpopular clients. Disciplinary actions by some state licensing agencies give off the appearance that certain lawyers were targeted for those disciplinary actions because of who the lawyers clients were.
So, while lawyers are pushing to expand government ability to force people to do work the people don’t like, lawyers also seek to increase their own ability to prevent other lawyers from doing work the other lawyers want to do.
That sort of gets to what I was saying. If a lawyer’s personal or political interests supersede his client’s interests forcing him to represent you would be folly. Same with a doctor. You want your arm cut off because you don’t feel like it belongs to you, and he refuses. You sue him to remove your arm because he’s “able-ist”? It seems like forced labor.
Not like these judges are suggesting. For all the reasons the comments have expressed the law will not compel an unincarcerated/unconvicted/un-institutionalized man to perform any task. The law only rarely requires someone to complete contract performance when they have actually contracted to do something. And the law will not penalize failure to do something absent the formation of a contract to do so. Discrimination law is an exception. The theory being that someone offering services to the public cannot decline to offer those services to someone solely based on color of skin, et al. Discrimination law has “evolved” to the point of mind reading to ensure “justice” which now undermines the validity of the original departure from the standard law of contracts. We have arrived at the point that bigots warned us about in the 1960s and we are not a society any longer deserving of such abuse (assuming we ever were under our Constitution). Black entrepreneurship plummeted in the wake of government programs and generations of blacks have been re-enslaved in welfare and/or middle-class salaried workers to direct and indirect government employment and the Democrat party.
That’s correct. The recent freedom of religion “wins” were not as great as previous reported . . .