Supreme Court sends gay wedding cake dispute back to state courts

[DonViejo]

Source: NBC News


The Oregon case raises the same issues as the Colorado baker a year ago who refused to provide a custom cake for the wedding of two men.

June 17, 2019, 9:45 AM EDT / Updated June 17, 2019, 9:50 AM EDT

By Pete Williams

WASHINGTON — The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday dealt a partial victory to the owners of an Oregon bakery who were fined for refusing to provide a cake for a lesbian commitment ceremony.

The justices wiped out lower court rulings against the bakers and sent the case back for another round of hearings.

The legal dispute raised the same issues that arose a year ago in the case of a Colorado baker who refused to provide a custom cake to celebrate the wedding of two men. That baker, Jack Phillips of Masterpiece Cake, said it would require him to act against his religious views and violate his right of free speech.

The court failed then to resolve the central issues in his case, ruling instead on narrow grounds unique to him. Religiously affiliated groups were hoping the justices would use the Oregon case to answer the hard questions it avoided last year. But sending the case back to the lower courts, with instructions to reconsider their rulings in light of the Colorado case, gives the lower courts very little to go on.


Read more: https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/supreme-court/supreme-court-sends-gay-wedding-cake-dispute-back-state-court-n1018176?cid=public-rss_20190617

[AllaN01Bear]

1. what about my right to free speach.

[Ford_Prefect]

3. Simply put: the law defines commerce done in public as subject to law.

If you are going to serve the public you are obliged to serve them all, equally.

[X_Digger]

12. Not really, no. The 1964 Civil Rights Act prohibits discrimination in public business..

.. based on certain criteria. (Race, gender, religion, nationality, etc)

You can absolutely kick someone out for being a republican, or a red head, or because their name is Mike.

What you cannot do is discriminate based on a protected class / characteristic.

In this case, sexual orientation and gender identity needs to be added to the list of protected classes.

[not_the_one]

2. it seems that a "public" business wants to pick and choose which of the "public" to serve...

in other words, they want to be able to discriminate, citing their religious freedom to discriminate.

So the religious are being given the right to discriminate, whereas the NON-religious have no right to discriminate.

This is America, where we should ALL have the same rights as the religious.

And damn it, I want the same right to discriminate that my christian brethren have. At which point I will IMMEDDIATELY slam the door in the face of all christians, BECAUSE they are christians.

Sounds like a a blatant discrimination case in the making.

Note there is NO sarcasm tag...

[groundloop]

6. NO.... it's simply bigots misusing religion as an excuse for their behavior

[Shrek]

4. I wish they would just rule on the merits and be done with it

They'll have to do it eventually so they might as well just get it over with.

[Marthe48]

5. What'll happen is that states that refuse service

to minorities will see the diversity of their states lag. They will lose imagination, inclusiveness and joy. They will indeed turn into deserts of narrow minded zealots no one wants to meet.

[jmowreader]

7. I swear...

If I could scrape up a half-million dollars to do it, I’d go to the place where one of these bigoted bakers lives and set up a competing bakery that serves everyone and makes better cakes. Solve the problem of Masterpiece Cakeshop the American Way: drive him out of business by making a better product.

I wonder if New York Cake Supply Company sells same-sex wedding cake toppers.

[Jedi Guy]

9. If I were the owner of a bakery competing with them, that's exactly what I'd do.

Great bigass rainbow Pride cake in the window with "Equal Love" written on it in frosting. Then let the market take care of the issue.

[forgotmylogin]

8. said it would require him to act against his religious views and violate his right of free speech.

I understand "religious views", but where do they get off claiming free speech? They charge for cakes, right?

It's not like they asked him to sign his name. Technically it's a "right to refuse service" issue, but "free" speech does not apply when money changes hands, I would think?

It's like when an actor is paid to portray a murderer in a movie. The things they say are not their own words or ideology; it's a job.

[Igel]

11. The New York Times charges for its product.

Obviously, there is no free press in this case, so the NYT doesn't count.

Or perhaps I could say that since they don't cover something I think is important, they're not really being a press at all. The point being that freedom to speak or to publish entails the freedom *not* to speak or publish. Just as my being guaranteed due process doesn't require that the government first arrest me for some reason just so it could provide due process.

A lot of fields that are more or less "creative" in some sense are taken to include personal self expression. It's like asking a gay Jewish progressive painter to produce a painting showing a proud, triumphant Hitler over a welter of pathetic, stereotypical death camp victims as, on the sides, people celebrate. The painter would most likely say "no" *or* would try to subvert the topic in hopes that the patron didn't catch the gibe. The right to self expression entails the right to not express the self.

Notice that in the various cases there's the regular trade by the business running in the background. For example, the Colorado baker regularly sold wedding cakes to gay couples; there was no discrimination at that level. The difference was that the ones sold were routine and set out for sale by whoever came along, and the one that he was sued over, like others that he was asked to make and turned down, were custom jobs, one-offs for specific customers. (If they were violins, they'd be called "bench made" not "personal made"; if houses, made for spec as opposed to sitting down with the architect.)

[Jedi Guy]

10. What strikes me about these incidents is the need to cite the clients' sexuality as the reason.

If they'd simply said, "I'm very sorry but I'm fully booked that week so I can't accommodate your request" then it's a non-issue. It's a lie, yes. But they feel the need to specifically twist the knife by citing the clients' sexuality as the reason to decline service. That makes it pretty plain that there's some animus there, for all their protestations to the contrary.

Someone should really try a test. Have two men or two women go in to look at cakes, and say they need a cake for a wedding rather than our wedding. Don't make it explicit that it's for a same-sex wedding, but let there be enough circumstantial evidence that that's the case, and then see what the baker does.