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Masterpiece Cakes v. Colorado’s Ministry of Love
Jack Phillips of Masterpiece Cakes.
This morning, the Supreme Court of the US granted cert to hear Jack Phillips’s suit against the Colorado Human Rights Commission (an Orwellian name appropriate to these loathsome apparatchiks of Cultural Marxism) in which that board held Phillips’s Masterpiece Cakes had violated the human rights of a gay couple by refusing to bake them a wedding cake.
The case in my opinion is, or ought to be, a slam dunk in favor of Phillips. While the Obergefell decision legalized gay marriage throughout the land, persons such as myself were not cheered at the fact that the right outcome was likely reached through the wrong process. The outcome in question has borne fruit of a similar nature, in that this judicial steamroller has been set loose throughout the land in a wave of forced tolerance, trampling of the First Amendment rights of various objectors.
Of interest in this case is not only the Religious Freedom aspect, but a potential for the restoration of some genuine freedom of association via the pushing back of the frontier of public accommodation laws.
Certainly, the usual suspects at the ACLU, GLAAD, and various other fronts of Cult Marx will squeal mightily should the conservatives on the Court rule (correctly) that people should not be forced to celebrate or engage in commerce with occasions they find offensive to their religious convictions, but it will be a step in the right direction for all involved. The protection of the law against State coercion and discrimination (as was upheld today 7-2 in the Trinity case) doesn’t end where homosexuality begins.
I am also not insensitive to the fact that Neil Gorsuch will play a large role in this process, for which I heartily congratulate the President and wish him many more successful SCOTUS appointments.
Published in General
Fingers are crossed on this one.
This has been an old argument of mine, though, in that I firmly believe that the original Civil Rights Act set a horribly twisted precedent in forcing businesses to take all potential customers. The “Public Accommodation” principle, while it was certainly aimed at halting the Jim Crow era problems of businesses discriminating against customers on race, IMO over-corrected for the problem, and laid the groundwork for the more expansive laws and lawsuits we have today.
I think what Skip alludes to in his comment is what will doom this case if you are a religious liberty/right to associate thinker. The Court, in some strange way, will make the case that to allow Christian business owners to decide who they open their businesses to will also pave the way for Jim Crow to be rekindled. I hope I am wrong, but the Court has cobbled imaginative reasoning out of nothing before and I have no doubt in their ability to do it again.
It’s recurrence of the problem of creating protected classes and what happens when the “protections” allocated to 2 different classes compete. Who takes precedence?
Finally. Let’s hope their case is strong and that we get a good decision.
It’s an interesting question because “Who is being harmed?” then becomes a live issue. Under that heading solely it’s arguable that the Court will rule against Masterpiece, but the Constitution doesn’t ask that question. If the Court reads the First Amendment and the Constitution only it seems to cut in the opposite direction, because in order for there to be a “Compelling State Interest” in a private baker making a cake for somebody he doesn’t want to, you have to ascribe power to the government that is practically unlimited in scopes both grand and mundane.
I think the Court won’t be interested in allowing the States to define down to the jot and tittle just how a private business is to act in regards to this issue. Of course, I could be completely wrong and the 5 conservatives could go wobbly, but given the Trinity decision today I am heartened.
Is the only way to prevent anything worse to emerging from these court decision is push to repeal all of the social engineering Supreme Court decisions. Roe v Wade, Obergefell (couldn’t they have found someone with an easier last name to spell or say) ETC…….. and hash this out in the legislature where it is supposed to be.
I know it’s a pipe dream but we are going to keep painting over these problem areas and creating more problems and having to paint over them when the only solution is to sand it back down and start from scratch.
What keeps me hopeful here is that the CRA is a federal law and is very specific in the sorts of discrimination outlawed, while these state statutes go well beyond the federal law in their scope, their lack of process, and their mercurial application. But even taking that line is, unfortunately, a bit of a dodge as it may avoid the larger questions to go for a technical win.
Or we just get the government out of these areas entirely and let society figure stuff out for themselves.
Yes, which is why it should go back to the states and legislatures there as they are a closer representative of the people. The government will never be allowed to get out these areas because people will keep demanding that it be involved. Best to have it at the state level and actually debated then at the federal level done by an unelected court.
Unfortunately that is highly unlikely to happen. After all, the feds are still micro-managing voting districts in most southern states a good 2 generations after the problems were dealt with.
You misunderstand – why legislate on this stuff at all? Why should it be the subject of government?
No doubt – but one should keep the goal in sight while maneuvering past each defender.
It shouldn’t, but the government will never be allowed to not intrude into these areas. The people will demand it. You know the whole “give us a King” 1 Samuel. You don’t have to be religious to know that for some reason humanity has a hard time with freedom.
There could be some thawing on that front as well.
Of course, the Voting Rights Act will have to be either struck down or repealed (fat chance on the latter) for the Minority Majority district mandates to be undone.
People do enjoy their sinecures too much.
And I think there is a practical difference between serving the general public and expecting a custom service be performed on request. If you asked social conservatives whether a customer should be expelled from the bakery store because he’s gay, I’d bet that 99% of conservatives (there are always lunatics) would consider that atrocious, and demand the gay customer be allowed to shop freely. But if you asked those same conservatives whether the baker should be forced to participate in the wedding, they’d overwhelmingly say no. That’s distinction gets blurred, but there’s a reason why conservatives respond to different circumstances.
You hit on it: it’s a pipe dream. And I don’t know if I am too confident that there will eventually be a “start[ing] from scratch” anytime soon either.
I am on the record myself of saying that at this point in time, with instant communications, Yelp!, and many other outlets, that I believe any business should be allowed to refuse service to anyone for any reason, be the reasons pure bigotry or something else. The thought experiment being this: if an idiot in a Nazi uniform walked into a Jewish delicatessen and demanded service, should the store be allowed to toss him out? A 2nd thought experiment: if a Catholic walks into a photographer’s office asks for a photo shoot of an upcoming pro-life march, and said photographer is a well known donor to Planned Parenthood, should said photographer be obligated to provide that service?
I’ve been curious about the legality of this all along. I would expect there to be a separate personal service contract for a wedding cake that includes attendance. And people have the basic right to refuse such contracts; I have done so myself.
For example, I want Barack Obama to clean out my garage this Saturday morning. I’ll pay him $20/hr. If I make him aware of that somehow, and he doesn’t show, am I entitled to a six figure settlement? Of course not, it’s ridiculous. Just because I want to hire him doesn’t mean he has to work for me.
What I have never understood is how this case is any different from that.
Didn’t the Court strike that down a couple of years ago and rule that this provision of the Voting Rights Act was no longer necessary?
That has been the nub of the problem with the gay rights movement versus conservative Christians since the movement began. Well said.
Yeah Mate De is correct here. Unless one lives alone on an island, man will always attempt to govern man. Accepting that goes a long way toward realizing the reality in which we all live and why it is important that, since we are to be governed, the government be as close to the governed as possible. It is much more difficult for your neighbor who knows you well and borrows your hedge trimmers to call you a bigot from the floor of county counsel or even the state house than it is for a complete stranger to do so from the floor of the US House.
I have a pretty pessimistic view of the future. Empires have risen and fell in the past and we seem to be on the fast track to decline. It’s almost impossible to imagine rolling back any of this encroachment of this massive government, both fiscally and socially. The majority of the people have been indoctrinated to the point that they can’t even imagine a cut back on anything. It’s amazing how brainwashed a free society can be, especially with the amount of information out. So many people just take what they hear as Gospel and never take the time to look anything up to see if it’s true. It’s sad which is why I think we’re doomed.
This is part of the fun of Ricochet. When I posted my comment, I originally wanted to add that participation is an inference of agreement. And then I stopped myself, because my next thought was to admit that I’m not a lawyer, and I don’t know what would legally constitute agreement. I went googling for an answer to the question: is there a legal standard for what actions infer agreement?
It seems like an easy question, until you try to answer it …
And yet our entire system of government is one in which the areas of government are strictly confined. I see no reason why we cannot do the same here.
Our government has not adhered to those restrictions in a very long time. In fact the government, was pushing those limitations before the ink was dry on the Constitution. Why would you think in this area, the government will respect the limitations of their power?
Exactly what I’ve always wondered about myself. How this is even in question is beyond me.
IIRC, the portion of the VRA that was struck down by the court had to do with preclearance from the Justice Department for some States to change the laws in regard to voting – not gerrymandered minority districts. The recent Wisconsin case arguing that a Gerrymander was too partisan and requiring a redrawing of those districts could be the camel’s nose under the tent arguing that creating minority majority districts is a de facto guarantee of Democrat representation that damages people in those districts not of that party.
Well they are only confined in a sense. The general government is specifically tasked with specific powers, the state governments have a broader mandate. In each state, that mandate is defined in 50 different ways to reflect the sentiments and notions of the people of those states. In principle I agree with you: a government at any level ought not have the power to tell a private business owner whom he or she can service. But what is the reality? The reality is that we have governments and such governments are going to be staffed with people who wish to tell others how to live their lives beyond that which–I would think–is universally agreed to, i.e. no murdering, raping, thieving. So, if we are going to have a segment of society demand that Christians employ their privately held businesses in ways that are counter to Christian theological doctrine, then it is best that only the Christians in a small area be effected rather than Christians nation wide. I am hoping that SCOTUS will rule in such a manner as to maintain this sense of local government as opposed to following their tried and true pattern of forcing blanket solutions to regional problems.
Ah, that’s right. Thanks for the clarification. It’s always good to have upper classmen to lean on when searching for legal answers.