No, but it empowers thousands of hateful business owners to discriminate against gay people in a multitude of ways that while may not be permitted directly by this ruling, will still make life harder for gay people all over the country, and in the BEST case tie up the court system frivolously, and in the worst just remind said gay people that they are second class citizens.
Read the actual opinions. SCOTUS ruled that the board in CO that hears these cases was too anti-religious. They didn't rule on the merits of whether the bakery should or shouldn't have to make the cake.
> No, but it empowers thousands of hateful business owners...
I do not think deanCommie meant a legal empowering. Only that many will feel more justified in their hate and act on it to the detriment of society as a whole.
In this case "narrow" has to do with the scope of the ruling, not the margin of votes. It could have been 9-0 and still been correctly referred to as "narrow."
The court did not rule on the conflict between free speech and discrimination that was at the core of the case. Instead they made a "narrow" ruling saying that the shop owners did not receive a fair hearing in front of the Colorado Civil Rights commission. The broader free speech/discrimination question is still an open one as far as SCOTUS is concerned. I assume we'll see another case down the road somewhere on this topic.
"Narrow" has two meanings in court opinions like these.
You mean the first one: a split that's close.
The meaning your parent meant was "not making sweeping generalized judgments, but staying close to the case at hand".
That's usully considered to be a good thing, because it leaves open the possibility to decide differently another case that is different in a relevant way, but whose relevant difference couldn't really be foreseen on the former case.
That's a disingenuous argument. They didn't say "we don't serve gays here", they said "we don't want to make a custom cake as requested".
If a gay person walked in, picked a cake off the shelf and said "I'd like to buy this cake" and was refused for being gay, that's a different story. As in that would literally be a completely different story than what happened.
They do, but I imagine there are quite a few (all?) cake shops that would refuse to make cakes with particular messages. What if, for example, a gay owned bakery was asked by a Muslim Imam to make a cake with the message "Thank Allah for the Pulse nightclub shooting"? Would the bakery be in violation of the CRA as they are discriminating on the basis of religion?
The question in this case was not whether the baker would sell a cake to a gay person (he was willing to do so), it was whether the baker had to make a cake with a particular message that he felt violated his personal and deeply held beliefs.
No, per the article the baker was not refusing to "make a cake with a specific message", he refused to make any custom cake for gay couples.
>The Colorado Court of Appeals ruled that Mr. Phillips’s free speech rights had not been violated, noting that the couple had not discussed the cake’s design before Mr. Phillips turned them down.
At the time the cake was requested, state law afforded storekeepers some latitude to decline to create specific messages the storekeeper considered offensive. In fact, during the time this case was making its way through the courts the Colorado Civil Rights Commission upheld 3 other bakers' rights to decline to make cakes with messages that they thought were demeaning to gay persons or gay marriage.
It is a 'public accommodation' within the meaning of the legal definition: i.e., a place where the general public may freely enter and do business. Civil rights law forbids discrimination in public accommodations on the basis of race, religion, or national origin. If a Christian baker said, we don't serve Jews, they'd get sued in a minute.
Except if the reason they are refusing them service is because they are a member of a protected class. This was a core issue of the civil rights movement.
It could be argued that forcing a business owner to provide a service they don’t want to perform is assault by the state (protected classes notwithstanding).
What if a business owner’s religion precludes then from serving a protected class or someone with a disability? Which takes precedence?
But the business owner in this case is specifically offering to provide the service (baking a cake to your requirements) already. Unless they aren't, and they just offer a number of predesigned, off-the-shelf cakes, but it doesn't sound like that's the case here.
i think the argument is that, while refusing to serve the gay couple at all would be illegal discrimination, refusing to make a cake with their specific design is not. although i find it gross that people would have an issue making this type of cake, i find the free speech angle somewhat compelling in this case.
Per the article, the baker did not know a specific design, he categorically refused to make any custom cake for them.
>The Colorado Court of Appeals ruled that Mr. Phillips’s free speech rights had not been violated, noting that the couple had not discussed the cake’s design before Mr. Phillips turned them down.
The markets didn’t decide to only allow bakers that served all races to stay in business - the federal government passed a law that required bakers to serve all races and the market complied.
Capitalism actially straight up sometimes requires regulation. Sorry.
I'm coming to the conclusion that when the economic system is Capitalism the goverment will become a Plutocracy, regardless of how well regulated it is.
Money is power, and nothing concentrates wealth like capitalism.
These laws exist because the market doesn't work the way we want them to. If discriminatory businesses failed because they were discriminatory, we wouldn't need such laws.
If people didn't recognize discrimination, we wouldn't have enacted those laws.
The market would have eventually driven these discriminatory businesses to bankruptcy. Majority public opinion had changed. That's why we were able to pass the laws. Would there be some holdouts? Maybe, but they probably wouldn't have lasted in the face of protests and pickets and lack of customers. Those that did would not be numerous enough to matter.
If you don’t believe that discriminatory companies don’t necessarily fail because they discriminate against minorities (especially small businesses in segregated communities), I kindly suggest you read Katzenbach v. McClung, 379 U.S. 294 (1964) and Heart of Atlanta Motel, Inc. v. United States, 379 U.S. 241 (1964).
The landscape may have evolved since, especially with large companies, but if you don’t believe there are still scores of small businesses in small towns who get away with discrimination on a frequent basis, you should get out some more.
In the south many restaurants did not sell to African-Americans. Those restaurants did very well in the free market compared to restaurants that sold to African-Americans.
The cake was meant to be a celebration of the gay marriage; the two are directly related. It's not the same as all of the racial segregation comparisons people are so quick spew on here.
It's exactly the same. "The cake was meant to be a celebration of a Black marriage, and the plaintiff's religion doesn't accept Black people as human."
What if your religion says that "black people are inferior to white people?"
This is at the very nature of the debate: Are people of different sexualities HUMAN rights, in EXACTLY the same way that people of different ethnicities are.
Because if they are, civil rights supercede religious rights. ("Your fist's freedom ends where my face begins")
Time and time again the US falls on the side that "no, gay people are not entitled to civil rights", diametrically opposite from every other western nation.
That would have nothing to do with characteristics of their marriage, that'd be simple racial discrimination. The marriage would be an arbitrary detail in that scenario. I don't hold the same position as him, but if the guy genuinely believes he'd be punished in the afterlife for celebrating a same-sex marriage, then leave him alone. A wedding cake is not a basic human right.
Civil Rights Act extends protections to "protected groups"
As of now, does not include sexual orientation (as far as I can tell), although other bodies have interpreted sexual orientation to be protected (Equal Opportunity Employment)
I tend to agree at a high level, but what if the baker refused to bake for black people? Is that still ok? What if it wasn’t a baker, but a grocer or a pharmacist? What if it’s the only baker in town? Where should the line be drawn, and why there?
This Latino place down the street serves the best rice and beans ever, they also wont server you if you're wearing pants falling off your ass(literal sign). The 7-11 won't serve you unless you're wearing a shirt, and shoes. Businesses can server whoever the hell they want.
They could have gotten a cake if they had been willing to get one that didn't specifically express the homosexual nature of the wedding. The baker had no problem selling them a generic cake, the issue was that he didn't want to make a cake that expressed a message he disagreed with.
Your statement is quite ignorant. There is a massive difference between business-specific dress codes (both of your examples), and discrimination based on the way a person was born.
Inadequate clothing is not a protected class under the Civil Rights Act. Hence there are major legal differences between refusing to serve a person because they are black, and refusing to serve a person because they are shirtless.
No they can't. Exposing your ass and being shirtless aren't protected classes. You can't refuse service because someone is black, because it is a protected class.
Isn't the issue not refusing the group, but refusing work related to the group? Say there was a bakery that refused to make a NAACP cake, but which served people of any race from their normal selection of cakes? Even if one was to say that is wrong, it seems less wrong than fully denying any service to a person.
From a legal perspective you absolutely can. That is the purpose of having a legal system after all. If someone behaves otherwise then that's where the justice system comes in.
If the custom cake was an expression of free speech, forcing the baker to do so would be compelled speech. The principle you use to compel that speech would have broad implications for artists, writers, and all other creators.
This is completely false. The Civil Rights Act of 1964, “prohibits discrimination by privately owned places of public accommodation on the basis of race, color, religion or national origin.”
Wasn't the original case here something along the lines of refusing to bake a cake with homosexual imagery on it, not necessarily because the customers were a homosexual couple?
The OP's point should be revised: It's the bakers right to bake cakes however they want. And that's mostly true. If a KKK member came in and asked for a cake with lynching imagery on it, its their right to refuse service. Everything more morally noble than that is just shades of gray, and you do not want the courts and law getting involved in that kind of shades of gray. Leave it to the markets.
I'm increasingly convinced that the left is moving us toward a 1984-era world of pushing every little offense into the courts and law. They don't understand how important these fundamental liberties are, which doesn't mean they can't be tempered with things like the Civil Rights Act, but the spirit is still important. When the 2A goes, that's when its all over.
> Everything more morally noble than that is just shades of gray, and you do not want the courts and law getting involved in that kind of shades of gray. Leave it to the markets.
The Civil Rights Act seems to have worked out fine. The legal ability to refuse to sell houses to KKK members, but not to black people, seems to have not caused serious problems in society, a lack of fundamental liberties, whatever. Are there serious problems that I'm not noticing?
Generally speaking the interpretation “it’s the bakers right to bake cakes however they want” works how the law works - though of course that type of rule can still lead to discrimination (e.g. I don’t sell houses in that “neighborhood”).
However, your point about the left moving us towards orwellianism due to over litigating seems like B.S. to me. The second amendment isn’t a freedom canary (see australia). The Right just used the courts to redefine money as speech.
I don’t see how free speech is destoryed if sexual orientation or gender expression become protected classes like race, or country of origin.
OP was referring to the expression of free speech, which though the court didn’t rule on would likely have given the same outcome. Designing the cake and decorating could easily fall under free speech, and weakening the 1st amendment is a bad idea.
Imagine you’re a Jewish artist and sell your premade work in a gallery to the public, and also offer custom portrait commissions. An avowed Nazi can come and purchase your paintings, but you should never be forced to paint their portrait. You can imagine this scenario any number of ways, gay artist and fundamentalist anti-gay preacher for instance.
It’s not so much a slippery slope as a bright line, once you give the majority that power it will be abused.
>Wasn't the original case here something along the lines of refusing to bake a cake with homosexual imagery on it, not necessarily because the customers were a homosexual couple?
No. They had not discussed the content of the cake when they were refused service.
>I'm increasingly convinced that the left is moving us toward a 1984-era world...
Of course you are, because that narrative creates fear and fear sells.
Considering you’re not aware of the basic facts of this case, if your perception of such cases informs your paranoid worldview then perhaps it’s time to reassess it.
That's not how the law treats, say, selling houses: it's not a homeowner's right to sell their house to whomever they feel like selling for and not whomever they don't, if that feeling involves discrimination on race.
I think this discussion is likely to be more productive if folks who hold the belief you're holding also state what their agreement is with existing laws restricting how people can participate in the market: if you also disagree with housing anti-discrimination laws, that's fine, but it'll be easier to understand your position if you say you're advocating for those being unjust too. If you don't, I'm curious where you draw the distinction.
The counter argument being: what if instead of gay these people were African American? Could you refuse service then? Suppose it wasn’t cakes but a restaurant? In both instances, a minority is being refused service because of their specific minority status.
It was a common position in Christianity at certain points in this nation's history that black people should have less rights than white people. Literally the Southern Baptist Convention came into existence because the northern Baptists were too anti-slavery. "But religion" doesn't let you separate distinctions on sexual orientation from distinctions on race.
(Disclosure, I'm Christian, but also I'm a non-white member of the whitest mainline Protestant denomination in the US....)
They are a public accommodation and laws apply to them. He isn't compelled to bake them a cake, but only in the sense that he isn't compelled to operate a company that sells cakes to the public.
You can't force them to bake a cake for someone, but you can fine them, throw them in jail, or put them out of business for refusing.
However, I suggest reading the Court's opinions to see what reasons they actually used in their ruling.[1]
Their ruling focused largely on how they felt that the Colorado Civil Rights Commission (CCRC) didn't properly respect the baker's religious beliefs, and that the CCRC has demonstrated inconsistencies with their rulings on other similar cases.
Actually you can and this is a good thing in many cases. Though in some cases you end up in a gray area where it’s not so clear what is right. We force doctors to treat people and in certain circumstances they are forced to treat people even if they can’t pay. We force pharmacists to fill prescriptions. We prevent landlords from discriminating against protected classes.
In the case at hand I think the court got it right. I sympathize with the sentiment that a business owner ought to be able to turn down business but I don’t deny that there are situations where this shouldn’t be the case.
It goes both ways though; if I ask a gay baker to make clitoris cakes I don't think he should have to do that either, we all have the right to refuse to work on things we oppose; surely.
There is such a thing as decency, I wouldn't expect my local baker to make sexually suggestive cookies for me, she would not be comfortable making them and it would be arrogant of me to force her.
EDIT: for those likening the service to race, it's not quite the same, unless you were talking about a white person being unable to buy a racist cake from a black baker. Which I'm sure we all agree is a fair thing to refuse service for. We have control of what we put into the world. Tolerance means being tolerant, it does not extend so far as to deny my right to refuse to create something I do not support (matter of what you should support or not is not the topic here), otherwise anyone can ask anyone to make racist/sexist shit and they have no recourse.
That's not what the case details say; I am rereading now in case I misread.
From what I read they only found out that it was a gay couple _at_ the design phase because it was a same sex supporting cake, which went against the morality (however wrong) the bakers held.
>The Colorado Court of Appeals ruled that Mr. Phillips’s free speech rights had not been violated, noting that the couple had not discussed the cake’s design before Mr. Phillips turned them down.
That's indeed exactly what the article says.
>They were buying a wedding cake, and were denied before any design was discussed.
That analogy isn't really what's happened in this case, no one is saying a baker would be forced to make a specific type of cake they otherwise wouldn't offer. The better analogy to your situation is a baker (gay or otherwise) who refused to bake cakes for women.
Which, by the way, under current law would in fact be illegal.
No, you've got it wrong. They make cakes, the couple asked them to make one, and were refused service based on their sexual preference. The baker would presumably make that exact same cake design for another same-sex couple. Design of the cake had nothing to do with it.
There is a world of difference between someone refusing to design or bake a cake on the basis of the contents requested and someone refusing to do the same on the basis of the person(s) requesting the cake.
The baker refused to bake a cake because the couple was gay, not because of what was on it.
Would it be OK for a gay baker to refuse to make a cake with the inscription "Celebrating the third anniversary of the Pulse Night Club shooting" if the cake was being requested by someone whose religious teachings preach that homosexuality is a sin and those who engage in the practice should be killed?
Or how about for a gay coffee shop owner to kick Christians out of his shop because he disagrees with their belief system. See Bedlam Coffee in Seattle.
You're making an incredibly false analogy in the first scenario and misreading the case in the second.
In the first case there is no discrimination on the basis of religion, skin color or sex. In the second you are being disengenous because it was clear that they were not in fact kicked out because they were christian, but kicked out because of both what they were actively doing near and in his coffee shop. If they were kicked out solely on the basis of being Christian then yes, that would be a clear problem.
It's not false. There are religions that proscribe death for homosexual behavior. People celebrating such executions are celebrating their faith and their religion. Saying that denying them service is based on their actions and not on their religion is the same as saying that you're not refusing them service because they are gay, but because they act like gay people. There's no daylight between being something and acting like that thing.
>...but kicked out because of both what they were actively doing near and in his coffee shop.
They were doing nothing but be customers in his shop. They weren't leafleting or proselytizing. Kicking them out because they engaged in a protected practice outside of his shop is kicking them out because of what they are. Otherwise we could say that it's ok to deny service to people who, for example, march in a pride parade.
The baker offered to create the couple cakes for even things like a wedding shower, or to create various goodies for them. And of course they could also buy anything that was already baked in the shop including things that could be used as their wedding cake. The one thing he would not do is create a cake specifically for a same sex marriage as he felt it was endorsement of something he felt was unethical. He also had a long list of other things he would not create products to endorse, including Halloween.
This is why the case was fundamentally a freedom of speech case. The creation of a cake was seen as an expression of endorsement by the baker, and the state cannot compel individuals to endorse things they find offensive. To avoid copy pasting stuff, I wrote more details along with some background on 'speech' as well as state compulsion here [1].
He offered to sell them other prefab cakes, but refused specifically to bake them a cake because he viewed it as supporting gay marriage (and ergo, supporting their marriage).
In this case there is little to no distinction between what was on the cake versus the people requesting it. As I mentioned in another comment, if a black couple was refused service because the baker does not recognize marriage among black people I believe it would be considered flagrant racism.
And don't resort to ad hominem attacks against my arguments.
So I guess discrimination lives on as something folks can legally do.
What's to stop me from refusing to work with someone of a different race or gender because I believe in some religion that says those other people aren't people and are evil?
Setting precedence to allow people to fuck over other people and hide behind a religion, which can proclaim just about any arbitrary non-violent thing and be 'protected', seems very very wrong.
Also, SCOTUS, where's your commerce clause now? Why does this not apply?
> What's to stop me from refusing to work with someone What's to stop me from refusing to work with someone of a different race or gender because I believe in some religion that says those other people aren't people and are evil?
Eh, you missed the point. Replace 'work with' with 'serve' or whatever. This ruling empowers business owners as much as anyone else to refuse service based on sexual preference.
But it doesn't because the courts made a limited ruling that doesn't set a strong standard either way. It also applies to the service provided, not to whom is served. A bakery that refuses to sell any cakes to a gay couple is going to have a much worse time in court than a bakery refusing to make a gay wedding cake, but even in the latter case, assuming a lower court doesn't repeat the same mistakes made in this case, the Supreme Court may still rule against the baker.
Why even make such a comment without at least googling it for 30 seconds?
Since this whole thread has been flagged anyway I’m gonna go ahead and say I assume from your lazy display of ignorance that you throw the phrases “virtue signaling” and “snowflakes” around a lot.
I think it would be wise for doctors to do this. Does your family physician administrate chemotherapy drugs? No, he refers you to a specialist. It would be wise for any doctor to do the same when he's unfamiliar with the patients uniqueness.
This isn't about "Doctors refuse to give gender hormone/surgery treatment to trans folks", this is "Doctors refer to do normal doctor things to people who happen to be trans".
Yes. That's part of what makes that surgeon a professional - that they ignore their bias and do their job. If they cannot provide that standard of conduct they are unfit to be a surgeon.
What's better, a world where we have X surgeons who will do a good job for everyone, or a world where we have those X surgeons plus Y surgeons who refuse to operate on certain people, but do a good job for everyone else? It's not a choice between case 2 and a magical fairy tale case where we get X+Y surgeons who will do a good job for everyone.
Compared to not being treated at all? I might very well be willing to take my chances.
Also, the market's capacity to support surgeons is limited; not everyone who wants to can be a surgeon. And you get better at what you do with experience/practice and with employment in a place where you learn from other qualified folks. Laws that make life hard for surgeons who hate some of their patients have the effect of opening up positions for potential surgeons who wouldn't hate some of their patients.
There is a question of just how fair this is to the surgeon / whether it violates some fundamental rights (which is what SCOTUS was addressing here), but there is absolutely a benefit to society in legislating hateful surgeons out of their jobs.
Why isn't it? What if there's only one in-network surgeon that performs the surgery with your insurance? Or what if you live in a small- or medium-sized town and can't travel to another city where there might be more people able to perform the surgery? I can think of numerous cases where there might only be one surgeon who can perform it -- so you either take your chances or you go without.
I mean if you have a choice in the matter and all other things are equal, clearly you don't. But it turns out not all surgeries are elective, many are emergent and even for the elective ones, surgical experience is not evenly distributed so making it so that some people have a smaller selection of surgeons to chose from is less likely to lead to good health outcomes for that section of the population.
This seems like an odd statement because the bakers refused service only because the content of what they were creating was not in line with whatever morals they had.
It would be _more_ like a doctor not performing a transgender operation.
Without making a statement either way in regards to the ruling, one of the most critical issues in this case is whether or not writing a message on the cake is expressive.
Which is to say, that freedom of speech (or to not make speech) is at the center of this case. There is quite a bit of debate on whether or not decorating the cake is expressive conduct.
I can't see any way in which a surgeon operating on a patient is expressive, and therefore freedom of speech wouldn't come into it. Which means--even if the baker had won on expressive grounds (he didn't)--that the surgeon would still have no grounds for refusing the operate.
Except the surgeon has no reason to care about the sexual orientation of their patient. In the baker's defense, the couple's sexuality influences the end result of the cake that will then be put on display. Baking, in that regard, is an art form and it'd be silly to force the man to work on a piece of art that he cannot pour all of his soul into. Be it for lack of experience or religious conviction, forcing people is disgusting.
On the premise that it affects the decisions necessary for him to complete his work, I think it's reasonable for him to decide whether or not he wants to work on it. I see nothing discriminatory here.
> Will surgeons soon be able to refuse to operate on patients because they're gay? After all, it's a service in an open market.
No my interpretation of this doesn't allow that, nor should it. What it would allow is for a tattoo artist to refuse to ink a gay (or straight, or really anything else) message on someone's arm. Maybe if it's an elective surgery that could be considered to be purely artistic (rhinoplasty?) then the surgeon could refuse but that'd be fairly narrow.
Page 12 I think is where the money is. "Any decision in favor of the baker would have to be sufficiently constrained, lest all purveyors of goods and services who object to gay marriages for moral and religious reasons in effect be allowed to put up signs saying 'no goods or services will be sold if they will be used for gay marriages,' something that would impose a serious stigma on gay persons."
In effect, the ruling comes down in favor of the baker because it finds fault with the Colorado commission's deliberative process, not actually with CADA, nor does it say that religion must take precedence, merely that it must be considered. Both sides are going to pull pieces from this for future cases. I applaud Kennedy for trying to address the complexity of the issues here but it doesn't settle much.
You can look at all of the false precedents that are being extrapolated below to see how few of us read or understood this case well (I’m guilty here!)
What’s scary is how many of us are repeating arguments that the media narrativized this case with as a way of raising the stakes. So many “common sense” yet wrong arguments and conclusions being trotted out.
Even in this thread, much less in other discussions about this case, I've read a lot of people who believe the bakery refused to serve the couple at all, instead of refusing them a particular service but offering to sell them anything in the shop or to custom make cakes for any events other than a same sex wedding. If facts of the case are lost in the discussion, then what hope is there of minding the nuances of the ruling itself?
Also import was the time and legal setting in which this occurred. From the judgment[1]:
> His dilemma was understandable in 2012, which was before Colorado recognized the validity of gay marriages performed in the State and before this Court issued United States v. Windsor, 570 U. S. 744, or Obergefell. Given the State’s position at the time, there is some force to Phillips’ argument that he was not unreasonable in deeming his decision lawful. State law at the time also afforded storekeepers some latitude to decline to create specific messages they considered offensive.
As much as I might personally believe this baker to be a sanctimonious jerk, I believe in people's right to be a sanctimonious, prejudiced, awful jerk with their own stuff (just not other people's). For the same reason, I support a media company cancelling a TV show for racist tweets, or a sports association fining players for a particular action (even if I agree with the action).
We don't make people less awful by forcing them to use their own stuff in the way we would like them to use it.
It's clear from the text that the lower court's ruling was thrown out because of prejudicial behavior by Colorado's Civil Rights Commission during the hearing about this matter.
The Supreme Court didn't decide anything about the baker's actions, only that he wasn't given a fair process by the state.
Personally, I think that their evidence of prejudicial behavior was pretty weak, which is the stance that Ginsburg and Sotomayor took as well.
It will be interesting to see what happens the next time a case like this makes it to the Supreme Court. I was hoping we would get a decision that would set more precedent about this kind of "freedom of expression vs freedom of religion vs civil rights law" debate.
I would love to see the SC basically say it comes down to how the business is structured (though I doubt they'll do that, since businesses are now considered 'people'). If you're using a DBA or just plain self-employed, you can discriminate based on personal beliefs since it's you who is the business. However, if you're using an LLC or fully incorporated, you can't since it's a licensed business that you work for, and not yourself doing it.
Basically, it'd make people weigh whether the benefits of an LLC are enough to make them give up their "religious freedom" to be bigots.
As odd as it is that people can use religion as their motivation for refusing to do something (refusing to sell alcohol/pork to a customer as a store checker because it is against their religion to consume those things), the free market in the US will probably weed those people out. If you generate bad publicity and turn away money enough, you will find yourself out of business in a capitalist society.
So, what if one’s religion doesn’t let you sell cakes to Infidels, or Jews, or blacks?
Why does religious beliefs get get out of jail free cards but other sincere beliefs, like say in Socialism or Environmentalism not get similar deference?
For example conscientous objection in the US used to rely on religous beliefs and it would be hard to avoid going to war by asserting your opposes to it for rational secular reasons.
The law should apply equally to everyone no matter your internal beliefs or how offended you are at something. Atheists can’t object to laws on ththe grounds they find something deeply offensive and against their morals, so why do Christian bigots get to do so?
>So, what if one’s religion doesn’t let you sell cakes to Infidels, or Jews, or blacks?
They court will rule against you. In this case, the bakery didn't refuse to serve them, but refused a particular service it didn't offer to anyone, gay wedding cakes. The question was, given that they offered a straight version of that service, should they be forced to offer the gay version. But even then the ruling is narrow enough it likely won't be applicable to a similar case in the future.
Do you imagine this to be an original and valuable comment?
This news is connected to Hacker News in that our community has long been interested in civil rights and societal shifts.
And more importantly, in that it has made the front page. 95 out of 100 times reaching the front page means it's proper here. The rest are buried by the mods without fifth-time commenters lamenting the declining quality as if they were a fixture in this forum.
Cases like this have me baffled. They just seem unreasonable. Why would you want to pay someone to make something important to you like a wedding cake if they clearly do not want to? On the other hand what sort of business rejects paying customers that aren't doing any harm?
I realize it is a matter of principle for both sides but why do both political wings in the US feel compelled to force those with opposing belief systems to comply with their belief system? Post a negative review on Yelp and just find a better baker that's not a jerk!
The level of tolerance of those with differing opinions is extremely low in this country and I fear it may eventually be an Achille's heel. Tolerance goes both ways, if someone is being a jerk to you avoid them don't bully them into doing things your way. On the flipside if someone wants to be your customer: let them!
These Supreme Court cases are rarely “one guy wants this and is astonished to find that this other guy won’t sell to him.” Both parties are acting in full knowledge and desirous of a Supreme Court case.
If it genuinely was a minority, infrequently held view it wouldn't be a big problem. This is why "people with red hair" isn't a protected class despite occasionally getting abuse on that basis. But unless there's some legal pressure you'd get whole counties or even states where it would be extremely hard for some people to get any kind of service at all.
"Equal marriage in this state is legal, but none of the registrars or venues are willing to have you" would be a pretty poor implementation of equal marriage.
>If it genuinely was a minority, infrequently held view it wouldn't be a big problem.
It's weird because height is something that is strongly discriminated based upon, but rarely explicitly other than dating. There is research showing its impacts on personal interactions, its impact on pay, its impact on elections, and more. But it is in no way protected and in many interactions I've personally seen it is treated as something that one shouldn't complain about.
Once you can point to scientific evidence that a non-controllable factor is being used to discriminate for things like income, shouldn't it be given protection, even if historically there wasn't the same level of discrimination as with things like race? Should it be the modern day discrimination based on something that should be irrelevant that matters (and if it is relevant, such as when hiring basketball players, such discrimination would be allowed, which is already the rule).
If enough businesses reject gay customers, it imposes a financial and emotional cost on being gay. Large numbers of people don't think that's acceptable behavior from commercial entities.
What is 'enough' businesses? AFAIK, sexual orientation is not a protected class under the civil rights (perhaps it should be). However, even without those protections there is not a rampant problem of discrimination. So it would seem to me these problematic businesses are being sought out and taken to court because of their religious beliefs. I think the burden on the customer to go to any other bakery is less than the burden of imposing on one's religious freedom.
Any comparisons to race on this topic is unfounded as race is already a protected class and I don't know of any mainstream religion that discriminates based on color.
> Any comparisons to race on this topic is unfounded as race is already a protected class and I don't know of any mainstream religion that discriminates based on color.
Religion was an integral part of opposition to interracial marriages in the United States. In the case Loving v. Virginia, the case then ended up striking down bans on interracial marriage, the trial judge stated "Almighty God created the races white, black, yellow, malay and red, and he placed them on separate continents. And, but for the interference with his arrangement, there would be no cause for such marriage. The fact that he separated the races shows that he did not intend for the races to mix." [1]
> I think the burden on the customer to go to any other bakery is less than the burden of imposing on one's religious freedom.
This isn't at all clear to me. Even if the burdens were mismatched, I think the fact that on the one side you have private individuals and on the other you have commercial entities is an important point that you are leaving out.
> This isn't at all clear to me. Even if the burdens were mismatched, I think the fact that on the one side you have private individuals and on the other you have commercial entities is an important point that you are leaving out.
That's a valid point. Organizations can't have religious beliefs, so it would seem to me that if you have an LLC or are incorporated, you can't discriminate based on things like that. But, if you're just using the DBA model or self-employed without even a DBA, you could be allowed to.
It'd make people really consider whether forming an LLC is worth it. There's a lot of benefits that come with it, but it also means you can no longer discriminate based on "religious freedom".
Much like other pushes for equality it’s probably less about the individual people and more about setting a legal and perhaps societal precedent. If you zoom in on individual cases during the civil rights era you could have expressed the same sentiment.
Because it is best for everyone if public businesses serve all customers regardless of race, sexual orientation, appearance, etc. No one wants to be rejected service because of their sexual orientation. Just like how it was terrible that businesses in the south would not provide service to African Americans back in the day.
Sure, this couple could have easily found another bakery to get their the cake. But, do we really want to allow business owners to reject service and make people from certain groups feel dejected and out of place?
I'm not sure what it's like in this couple's town, but in my hometown in the South, as of when I was in high school, I genuinely don't know where I'd go to find any gay-affirming baker. I could probably find a few who would take the job for money, but most of the good bakeries in the town were owned by old Cajun families who generally had strong Catholic beliefs, and most of the people not of that demographic were conservative Protestants. (I can also tell you a little bit about being raised in that environment and whether I would have felt totally comfortable selling such a cake if I hadn't left the town.) I think my best bet would have been a supermarket chain, but a) do you really want a supermarket cake for your wedding b) I have no reason to expect that the person working the bakery counter that day would be comfortable with my order.
Is the answer for a gay couple in such a place to just leave their hometown?
I don't think people should have to leave their hometown because of bigotry. If I was in their position I would want to leave ASAP because I would want nothing to do with them. What I don't understand is the proclivity people have for conflict versus ignoring the minority of bigots and enjoying life despite them.
They weren't a minority until sustained campaigning. Even now I know a number of people who've been rejected by their families for queerness. In "modern, urban" parts of the UK.
Bigotry has a nasty habit of getting in your face and making itself impossible to ignore. Sometimes violently.
To add to the discussion, my brother is in Lakewood, right next door. The gay couple isn't leaving anytime soon, as the area is pretty 'live and let live', they aren't being chased out (except maybe by hispters due to rising rents). Denver is pretty gay friendly in general. Though there are a fair few crazies, it's rare enough that any incident of bigotry is newsworthy.
My brother lives in Lakewood, so I've spent a fair amount of time in the area. It's west Denver and a pretty nice place to live. My take is that there are a lot of 'liberal' folks there; you see a lot of pride flags on the signs of mega-churches. Denver is a bit of a mixed bag in general. It's the meeting point between hyper-liberal Boulder and conservative Colorado Springs (though even CS is going liberal now). It's more of a 'libertarian' vibe than a 'republican' vibe. As such, the folks there will side with the baker in terms of his right to be bigoted. But his business is really hurting at the same time because people think he's an ass. In general, CO politics are pretty quiet, as the legislature can't raise taxes (TABOR). But when it comes to water and drought, Denver makes DC look like kiddos. Water is the BIG deal in CO.
There is a spectrum of goods and services suppliers, from luxury to essential. These gentlemen wanted a wedding cake. It's not essential and they may have had time to find an alternative supplier that, as you say, wasn't a jerk.
What happens when it's the pharmacy or grocery store? Or their kid's hockey coach or piano teacher? Or the only car mechanic in town?
I generally believe in a business' right to refuse service but I wrestle with situations like this.
If cake is art, then, we shouldn't force an artist to do something he doesn't wanna. That's very clearly free speech, although the reason is f'ing awful. Is cake art? I dont know.
But I don't think there's a general right to refuse service based on arbitrary beliefs. DOUBLY so when you're a medical professional.
One of the problems with letting the market solve our moral quagmires is that hate is plain and quotidian enough to seep into every corner of our interactions. Would you feel the same if a small town grocery store refused to serve disabled people?
And to the bully comment, there is an expectation in the free world that someone who enters the service industry serves people based on their interest in the product and nothing else. You're free to be as shitty and intolerant as you want to be in your private residence.
Gosh golly, why would a black person want to eat in a restaurant run by an open white supremacist? To make a point, of course. Because this isn't just "opposing belief systems" in a Coke vs Pepsi way. We can't just all get along when the topic is effectively whether some group are really people or not.
Look at California's Proposition 8, for example. The text of it explicitly carved an exemption out of the state constitution's equal protection clause. The expressed notion was that everybody is equal before the law except gay people.
Tyranny of the majority is a common bug in democracies, which is why equal protection is important. As history shows, letting majorities oppress minorities leads to horrific results. Which is why equal protection is a vital principle of American government.
Your theory of tolerance is appealing but wrong. Minorities should not have to segregate themselves away from bigots. Separate but equal isn't equal.
I agree with your sentiments. But I do not see an epidemic of bakeries refusing to make cakes for minorities of any kind. It's just one baker here and there who acts poorly. It is nowhere near the same as the segregated south where discrimination was rampant.
Sure. But this is the thin end of the wedge. This suit wasn't funded by artists or bakers. It was funded by religious people who are upset they can't discriminate as much against gay people as they used to.
> Why would you want to pay someone to make something important to you like a wedding cake if they clearly do not want to?
You assume they wanted to get the cake. If you assume instead they wanted to get the baker - either in advance (knowing he'd refuse because of his beliefs that he didn't exactly hide), or after the refusal which offended them - then all of it makes perfect sense.
> I realize it is a matter of principle for both sides but why do both political wings in the US feel compelled to force those with opposing belief systems to comply with their belief system?
Because they can? Obviously it is pleasant (at least for some people) to have others to bow to your moral superiority, even more pleasant if you can do it using the vast powers of the government. I mean, a lot of people spend sleepless nights arguing with somebody wrong on the internet. Now if they have a chance to actually do something about it - like making being wrong punishable, make those outgroup bastards suffer, make them not have their wrong opinions anymore or at least be afraid to have them openly - why wouldn't many people take it? Experience proves they would.
> Tolerance goes both ways, if someone is being a jerk to you avoid them don't bully them into doing things your way.
That's the old way, unfortunately. The new way is if you think somebody is being a jerk, you are allowed to be as much jerk as you want to them, and then some, because you're Fighting For The Right Side. Yes, I don't like it either, but I don't see any significant cultural backlash against it. On the contrary, I see only more escalation of jerk-ness.
At the end of the day there will always be cases where one right stands against another and a society will have to decide which right is more important. Such decisions are shaping a society, not laws that say "you have right xy" without any context.
I'll be intrigued to see the long term consequences of this. Religious freedoms overriding civil rights regarding discrimination are a heck of a can of worms.
My local barber shop (who are really nice guys) nearly got into this situation a few years ago. On the day in question, all 3 barbers working were devout Muslim men who cannot touch a woman other than their wife. A woman came in looking for a men's cut. They refused. It made the news. They resolved it outside of courts amicably.
But what happens long term if everyone is allowed to discriminate against anyone they like so long as they wrap their beliefs up in a religious reasoning? Does society not lose out as we break off from interacting with those of other cultures?
A pretty resounding victory for the baker, with 7-2 vote siding with him, but also a very narrow ruling. I’m curious what will happen the next time this happens in a more controlled situation, without the gotchas of this trial.
I can’t believe there are comments here supporting the “baker’s right” to refuse service on these grounds.
>The Colorado Court of Appeals ruled that Mr. Phillips’s free speech rights had not been violated, noting that the couple had not discussed the cake’s design before Mr. Phillips turned them down.
This is a public business refusing service to a person(s) because of their sexual orentiation.
This is no different than refusing service to an interracial couple because you dont believe in race-mixing.
Yes, they could have gone to another bakery but that isn’t the point. Do you understand why anti-discriminatory laws exist? Step out of your privileged bubble and read some fucking civil rights and LGBT history.
Well, I'm generally for gay rights, but I think the decision was correct, not only on the narrow grounds it was actually decided on.
As far as I know, the baker did not refuse to sell the gay couple a wedding cake.
He refused to put the inscription on top himself. He offered the couple to either buy a pre-made cake with a standard inscription or – if they didn't want that (because it's obviously lower quality than a 100% hand-made cake) – to go to another bakery he recommended.
Presumably (but I don't know if he actually offered this) he would have been okay with selling his cake and the gay couple having someone else inscribe the cake.
Although the blogs loved to depict the case as "gay-hater refusing service to gays", it was really a case of "religious baker doesn't want to personally write on top, because he felt in this way he was giving his blessing".
I look forward to reading the full ruling, but this seems a little ahistorical to me. If you look at the civil war era, there were plenty of people with "sincere religious beliefs that motivated" their enslavement of black people. And those religious beliefs continued to motivate "separate but equal" schools, segregated restaurants, and the like.
We're currently seeing a rise in white supremacist thinking, so much so that people are calling it a second Nadir. [1] And the religious motivations for gender bias are even more blatant. I don't think it'll be too many more years before we see a case where somebody refuses to serve black people or unaccompanied women and claims a religious motivation. I'm sure the Supreme Court won't accept that, but I don't know how they'll justify one sort of "sincere religious" bigotry but not the other.
A fairly similar case in the UK where a hotel owner refused a room to a gay couple, came down in favour of the couple.
I'd have to agree with that decision. If you want to run a business, you shouldn't be allowed to refuse people service based on their sexual orientation, race, level of education, sex, religion, etc.
While I'm not familiar with UK law, in US law that would be open and shut if the reason he refused them the room was specifically because they were gay. It would be similar to if this baker refused to sell the couple anything because of their sexuality, which is not the case. He immediately offered to sell them anything already in the shop or to even create custom goodies for showers/birthdays/etc. But he would not create a product to endorse a view he found offensive.
And that's the major issue. Under freedom of speech you cannot be compelled by the state to endorse things you find distasteful, and cake creation is reasonably qualified as an expression of speech. By contrast, I do not think one could argue that giving somebody the keys to a room is any sort of expression.
I feel like people shouldn't get to decide what is distasteful or not. Bakers should be able to reject making a cake with swear words, sexual imagery and hate speech, and that's about it. Everything else you make, unless of course you don't have the resources/staff/time etc. But on the basis of the message on the cake, if it isn't hateful, bake it.
This is clearly without regard to American law, I'm sure it conflicts, but that's where my views lie on this :)
Have you considered the implications of when people can force others to perform services, involving expressions of speech, against their will? You could go into an Islamic cake shop and demand they draw an image of 'happy Mohammed' on a cake for you. You could demand Bob's Marketing Company create and execute a campaign stating that Bob's Marketing Company is the worst. And so on.
That's just at the high level if you can actually get the law to function. Which is itself a huge question. That's where you get into questions like what is sexual imagery? What is hate speech? Who defines that? For instance back in the more puritanical times of the US, which really was not all that long ago, there were numerous laws against indecent material. And again the problem regularly faced is how do you define it? Consider all the content that would be naturally ambiguous. Consider other content that intentionally slides in or out of the restrictions for whatever end. Not so easy!
Setting aside the moral question for a moment, this seems like a terrible idea from a business perspective. Say nothing of the potential revenue they're turning away over their (bigoted) political views, they'll also lose business from bad PR.
An important issue here is that the baker did not refuse the couple service because they were homosexual. The baker has a fairly long list of things he refuses to endorse with custom products. This includes Halloween, atheism, anti-American views, and same sex marriage. In his interaction with the couple he stated he would not bake a cake for a same sex wedding, but offered to sell them anything in the shop or to create custom birthday cakes, shower cakes, or cookies and brownies. In front of the court he also stated he would have sold them any premade wedding cake - just not create one specifically for this event. In other words if a heterosexual couple wanted a cake that endorsed homosexual views, he would still have refused them. It's not about the person, but about the product he's being asked to create.
This is very important because freedom of speech also has the nuance in that there's also protects against compelled speech. And on this there's a couple of really interesting components. The courts have ruled a wide range of things from stained glass windows to even topless dancing as expressions protected by the first amendment, and so 'cake art' almost certainly falls within this protection. This is even implied in the price. Wedding cakes can run hundreds of dollars, yet the cost of the ingredients and even labor is a tiny fraction of that. People are paying for the artistic expression of the person creating the cake.
A different argument might be that nobody could think that the baker creating the cake was itself an endorsement of gay marriage. One of the many interesting 'friend of the court' filings here dealt with this. There was an interesting case in New Hampshire who's state slogan is Live Free or Die. This was (is?) emblazoned on all license plates from the state, but one individual took issue with this as it did align with their own moral beliefs, and so they sued the state and this case ended up at the US supreme court. The state lost. The point here is that nobody could reasonably believe that the individual with 'life free or die' on the license plate was actually endorsing such a view, since it was a standard part of the kit for everybody - yet even when no individual can reasonably believe that some form of speech might be endorsing a view (or reflective of the individual who is indirectly 'expressing' such a view), one cannot be compelled to expressions that they find offensive.
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[ 2.9 ms ] story [ 245 ms ] threadI do not think deanCommie meant a legal empowering. Only that many will feel more justified in their hate and act on it to the detriment of society as a whole.
The court did not rule on the conflict between free speech and discrimination that was at the core of the case. Instead they made a "narrow" ruling saying that the shop owners did not receive a fair hearing in front of the Colorado Civil Rights commission. The broader free speech/discrimination question is still an open one as far as SCOTUS is concerned. I assume we'll see another case down the road somewhere on this topic.
You mean the first one: a split that's close.
The meaning your parent meant was "not making sweeping generalized judgments, but staying close to the case at hand".
That's usully considered to be a good thing, because it leaves open the possibility to decide differently another case that is different in a relevant way, but whose relevant difference couldn't really be foreseen on the former case.
If a gay person walked in, picked a cake off the shelf and said "I'd like to buy this cake" and was refused for being gay, that's a different story. As in that would literally be a completely different story than what happened.
The question in this case was not whether the baker would sell a cake to a gay person (he was willing to do so), it was whether the baker had to make a cake with a particular message that he felt violated his personal and deeply held beliefs.
>The Colorado Court of Appeals ruled that Mr. Phillips’s free speech rights had not been violated, noting that the couple had not discussed the cake’s design before Mr. Phillips turned them down.
"We don't serve women here"
"We don't serve Chinese here"
"We don't serve emacs users here"
"We don't serve zerg rushers here"
"We don't serve pubg players here"
"We don't serve Ayn Rand fans here"
"We don't serve sex offenders here"
"We don't serve bearded fellows here"
"We don't serve tank top wearers here"
"we don't serve smokers here"
"We don't serve short people here"
"We don't serve underhand servers here"
"We don't serve pedophobes here"
"We don't serve <subset of humans> here"
It doesn't matter. It is his choice and his business.
I genuinely thought this ruling would go the other way, but I can appreciate why it didn’t. The demarcation of rights is fraught with complexity.
What if a business owner’s religion precludes then from serving a protected class or someone with a disability? Which takes precedence?
>The Colorado Court of Appeals ruled that Mr. Phillips’s free speech rights had not been violated, noting that the couple had not discussed the cake’s design before Mr. Phillips turned them down.
Capitalism actially straight up sometimes requires regulation. Sorry.
Money is power, and nothing concentrates wealth like capitalism.
The market would have eventually driven these discriminatory businesses to bankruptcy. Majority public opinion had changed. That's why we were able to pass the laws. Would there be some holdouts? Maybe, but they probably wouldn't have lasted in the face of protests and pickets and lack of customers. Those that did would not be numerous enough to matter.
The landscape may have evolved since, especially with large companies, but if you don’t believe there are still scores of small businesses in small towns who get away with discrimination on a frequent basis, you should get out some more.
In the south many restaurants did not sell to African-Americans. Those restaurants did very well in the free market compared to restaurants that sold to African-Americans.
This is at the very nature of the debate: Are people of different sexualities HUMAN rights, in EXACTLY the same way that people of different ethnicities are.
Because if they are, civil rights supercede religious rights. ("Your fist's freedom ends where my face begins")
Time and time again the US falls on the side that "no, gay people are not entitled to civil rights", diametrically opposite from every other western nation.
As of now, does not include sexual orientation (as far as I can tell), although other bodies have interpreted sexual orientation to be protected (Equal Opportunity Employment)
Everything you just described as criteria for refusal was by personal choice.
From a legal perspective you absolutely can. That is the purpose of having a legal system after all. If someone behaves otherwise then that's where the justice system comes in.
This overstates it some. The baker is not forced to run a business that sells cakes to the public.
> The principle you use to compel that speech would have broad implications for artists, writers, and all other creators.
Not clear what the implications would be. I am not coming with broad results or impacts in a few minutes of thought. I get examples like:
* An artists that sells couple portraits to couples can not refuse a gay couple.
* A writer who sells obituaries to the public can not refuse to write one about a gay person.
* A baker who sells cakes to the public can not refuse to bake a cake for a gay couple.
https://www.legalzoom.com/articles/the-right-to-refuse-servi...
If we think this law is outdated and need to be expanded, there are due process to change the law. We don't extend law just because we feel right.
I agree we should change the law for the sake of clarity, but laws change how they work in practice due to legal decisions all the time.
The OP's point should be revised: It's the bakers right to bake cakes however they want. And that's mostly true. If a KKK member came in and asked for a cake with lynching imagery on it, its their right to refuse service. Everything more morally noble than that is just shades of gray, and you do not want the courts and law getting involved in that kind of shades of gray. Leave it to the markets.
I'm increasingly convinced that the left is moving us toward a 1984-era world of pushing every little offense into the courts and law. They don't understand how important these fundamental liberties are, which doesn't mean they can't be tempered with things like the Civil Rights Act, but the spirit is still important. When the 2A goes, that's when its all over.
The Civil Rights Act seems to have worked out fine. The legal ability to refuse to sell houses to KKK members, but not to black people, seems to have not caused serious problems in society, a lack of fundamental liberties, whatever. Are there serious problems that I'm not noticing?
However, your point about the left moving us towards orwellianism due to over litigating seems like B.S. to me. The second amendment isn’t a freedom canary (see australia). The Right just used the courts to redefine money as speech.
I don’t see how free speech is destoryed if sexual orientation or gender expression become protected classes like race, or country of origin.
Imagine you’re a Jewish artist and sell your premade work in a gallery to the public, and also offer custom portrait commissions. An avowed Nazi can come and purchase your paintings, but you should never be forced to paint their portrait. You can imagine this scenario any number of ways, gay artist and fundamentalist anti-gay preacher for instance.
It’s not so much a slippery slope as a bright line, once you give the majority that power it will be abused.
No. They had not discussed the content of the cake when they were refused service.
>I'm increasingly convinced that the left is moving us toward a 1984-era world...
Of course you are, because that narrative creates fear and fear sells.
Considering you’re not aware of the basic facts of this case, if your perception of such cases informs your paranoid worldview then perhaps it’s time to reassess it.
I think this discussion is likely to be more productive if folks who hold the belief you're holding also state what their agreement is with existing laws restricting how people can participate in the market: if you also disagree with housing anti-discrimination laws, that's fine, but it'll be easier to understand your position if you say you're advocating for those being unjust too. If you don't, I'm curious where you draw the distinction.
(Disclosure, I'm Christian, but also I'm a non-white member of the whitest mainline Protestant denomination in the US....)
They are a public accommodation and laws apply to them. He isn't compelled to bake them a cake, but only in the sense that he isn't compelled to operate a company that sells cakes to the public.
However, I suggest reading the Court's opinions to see what reasons they actually used in their ruling.[1]
Their ruling focused largely on how they felt that the Colorado Civil Rights Commission (CCRC) didn't properly respect the baker's religious beliefs, and that the CCRC has demonstrated inconsistencies with their rulings on other similar cases.
[1]https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/17pdf/16-111_j4el.pdf
In the case at hand I think the court got it right. I sympathize with the sentiment that a business owner ought to be able to turn down business but I don’t deny that there are situations where this shouldn’t be the case.
What a beautiful world would have been the German Nazis world. (sarcastic)
http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2018/05/gop-congressman...
It goes both ways though; if I ask a gay baker to make clitoris cakes I don't think he should have to do that either, we all have the right to refuse to work on things we oppose; surely.
There is such a thing as decency, I wouldn't expect my local baker to make sexually suggestive cookies for me, she would not be comfortable making them and it would be arrogant of me to force her.
EDIT: for those likening the service to race, it's not quite the same, unless you were talking about a white person being unable to buy a racist cake from a black baker. Which I'm sure we all agree is a fair thing to refuse service for. We have control of what we put into the world. Tolerance means being tolerant, it does not extend so far as to deny my right to refuse to create something I do not support (matter of what you should support or not is not the topic here), otherwise anyone can ask anyone to make racist/sexist shit and they have no recourse.
From what I read they only found out that it was a gay couple _at_ the design phase because it was a same sex supporting cake, which went against the morality (however wrong) the bakers held.
That's indeed exactly what the article says.
>They were buying a wedding cake, and were denied before any design was discussed.
Which, by the way, under current law would in fact be illegal.
Doctors: I won't treat you because you're gay.
It can't work that way or we have a lot of discrimination.
There is a world of difference between someone refusing to design or bake a cake on the basis of the contents requested and someone refusing to do the same on the basis of the person(s) requesting the cake.
The baker refused to bake a cake because the couple was gay, not because of what was on it.
Sounds awfully like the content of the cake was what the bakers in question objected to, now necessarily the people requesting it.
Would it be OK for the baker to refuse service because he's against black people getting married?
Or how about for a gay coffee shop owner to kick Christians out of his shop because he disagrees with their belief system. See Bedlam Coffee in Seattle.
In the first case there is no discrimination on the basis of religion, skin color or sex. In the second you are being disengenous because it was clear that they were not in fact kicked out because they were christian, but kicked out because of both what they were actively doing near and in his coffee shop. If they were kicked out solely on the basis of being Christian then yes, that would be a clear problem.
>...but kicked out because of both what they were actively doing near and in his coffee shop.
They were doing nothing but be customers in his shop. They weren't leafleting or proselytizing. Kicking them out because they engaged in a protected practice outside of his shop is kicking them out because of what they are. Otherwise we could say that it's ok to deny service to people who, for example, march in a pride parade.
This is why the case was fundamentally a freedom of speech case. The creation of a cake was seen as an expression of endorsement by the baker, and the state cannot compel individuals to endorse things they find offensive. To avoid copy pasting stuff, I wrote more details along with some background on 'speech' as well as state compulsion here [1].
[1] - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17229172
The difference between the cake not sold and the cake he was willing to sell was what was on it.
You've fallen victim to hyper-sensationalized blogs.
He offered to sell them other prefab cakes, but refused specifically to bake them a cake because he viewed it as supporting gay marriage (and ergo, supporting their marriage).
In this case there is little to no distinction between what was on the cake versus the people requesting it. As I mentioned in another comment, if a black couple was refused service because the baker does not recognize marriage among black people I believe it would be considered flagrant racism.
And don't resort to ad hominem attacks against my arguments.
You're erither not understanding the issue or you're willfully obtuse.
Since it's such a charged issue, I'm pretty sure you're doing this out of malice.
What's to stop me from refusing to work with someone of a different race or gender because I believe in some religion that says those other people aren't people and are evil?
Setting precedence to allow people to fuck over other people and hide behind a religion, which can proclaim just about any arbitrary non-violent thing and be 'protected', seems very very wrong.
Also, SCOTUS, where's your commerce clause now? Why does this not apply?
You would probably be fired, or not hired at all.
Will surgeons soon be able to refuse to operate on patients because they're gay? After all, it's a service in an open market.
edit: it has been legal and common practice for doctors to refuse service to gay and trans people for at least two years. see thread below
Why even make such a comment without at least googling it for 30 seconds?
Since this whole thread has been flagged anyway I’m gonna go ahead and say I assume from your lazy display of ignorance that you throw the phrases “virtue signaling” and “snowflakes” around a lot.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tyra_Hunter
Judge: Doctors Have “Religious Freedom” to Refuse to Treat Trans Patients, Women Who’ve Had Abortions http://www.slate.com/blogs/outward/2017/01/03/doctors_may_re...
When doctors refuse to see transgender patients, the consequences can be dire https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/when-...
Will Health and Human Services Allow Doctors Refuse to Treat LGBTQ Patients? (Rating: True) https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/hhs-allow-doctors-to-refus...
Doctors Refuse to Treat Trans Patients More Often Than You Think https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/j5vwgg/doctors-refuse-to-...
Also, the market's capacity to support surgeons is limited; not everyone who wants to can be a surgeon. And you get better at what you do with experience/practice and with employment in a place where you learn from other qualified folks. Laws that make life hard for surgeons who hate some of their patients have the effect of opening up positions for potential surgeons who wouldn't hate some of their patients.
There is a question of just how fair this is to the surgeon / whether it violates some fundamental rights (which is what SCOTUS was addressing here), but there is absolutely a benefit to society in legislating hateful surgeons out of their jobs.
Except that's not the relevant comparison.
It would be _more_ like a doctor not performing a transgender operation.
Which is to say, that freedom of speech (or to not make speech) is at the center of this case. There is quite a bit of debate on whether or not decorating the cake is expressive conduct.
I can't see any way in which a surgeon operating on a patient is expressive, and therefore freedom of speech wouldn't come into it. Which means--even if the baker had won on expressive grounds (he didn't)--that the surgeon would still have no grounds for refusing the operate.
On the premise that it affects the decisions necessary for him to complete his work, I think it's reasonable for him to decide whether or not he wants to work on it. I see nothing discriminatory here.
No my interpretation of this doesn't allow that, nor should it. What it would allow is for a tattoo artist to refuse to ink a gay (or straight, or really anything else) message on someone's arm. Maybe if it's an elective surgery that could be considered to be purely artistic (rhinoplasty?) then the surgeon could refuse but that'd be fairly narrow.
In effect, the ruling comes down in favor of the baker because it finds fault with the Colorado commission's deliberative process, not actually with CADA, nor does it say that religion must take precedence, merely that it must be considered. Both sides are going to pull pieces from this for future cases. I applaud Kennedy for trying to address the complexity of the issues here but it doesn't settle much.
IANAL. (edited for typo)
What’s scary is how many of us are repeating arguments that the media narrativized this case with as a way of raising the stakes. So many “common sense” yet wrong arguments and conclusions being trotted out.
> His dilemma was understandable in 2012, which was before Colorado recognized the validity of gay marriages performed in the State and before this Court issued United States v. Windsor, 570 U. S. 744, or Obergefell. Given the State’s position at the time, there is some force to Phillips’ argument that he was not unreasonable in deeming his decision lawful. State law at the time also afforded storekeepers some latitude to decline to create specific messages they considered offensive.
[1]https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/17pdf/16-111_j4el.pdf
We don't make people less awful by forcing them to use their own stuff in the way we would like them to use it.
It's clear from the text that the lower court's ruling was thrown out because of prejudicial behavior by Colorado's Civil Rights Commission during the hearing about this matter.
The Supreme Court didn't decide anything about the baker's actions, only that he wasn't given a fair process by the state.
It will be interesting to see what happens the next time a case like this makes it to the Supreme Court. I was hoping we would get a decision that would set more precedent about this kind of "freedom of expression vs freedom of religion vs civil rights law" debate.
Basically, it'd make people weigh whether the benefits of an LLC are enough to make them give up their "religious freedom" to be bigots.
Why does religious beliefs get get out of jail free cards but other sincere beliefs, like say in Socialism or Environmentalism not get similar deference?
For example conscientous objection in the US used to rely on religous beliefs and it would be hard to avoid going to war by asserting your opposes to it for rational secular reasons.
The law should apply equally to everyone no matter your internal beliefs or how offended you are at something. Atheists can’t object to laws on ththe grounds they find something deeply offensive and against their morals, so why do Christian bigots get to do so?
They court will rule against you. In this case, the bakery didn't refuse to serve them, but refused a particular service it didn't offer to anyone, gay wedding cakes. The question was, given that they offered a straight version of that service, should they be forced to offer the gay version. But even then the ruling is narrow enough it likely won't be applicable to a similar case in the future.
This news is connected to Hacker News in that our community has long been interested in civil rights and societal shifts.
And more importantly, in that it has made the front page. 95 out of 100 times reaching the front page means it's proper here. The rest are buried by the mods without fifth-time commenters lamenting the declining quality as if they were a fixture in this forum.
I realize it is a matter of principle for both sides but why do both political wings in the US feel compelled to force those with opposing belief systems to comply with their belief system? Post a negative review on Yelp and just find a better baker that's not a jerk!
The level of tolerance of those with differing opinions is extremely low in this country and I fear it may eventually be an Achille's heel. Tolerance goes both ways, if someone is being a jerk to you avoid them don't bully them into doing things your way. On the flipside if someone wants to be your customer: let them!
"Equal marriage in this state is legal, but none of the registrars or venues are willing to have you" would be a pretty poor implementation of equal marriage.
It's weird because height is something that is strongly discriminated based upon, but rarely explicitly other than dating. There is research showing its impacts on personal interactions, its impact on pay, its impact on elections, and more. But it is in no way protected and in many interactions I've personally seen it is treated as something that one shouldn't complain about.
Once you can point to scientific evidence that a non-controllable factor is being used to discriminate for things like income, shouldn't it be given protection, even if historically there wasn't the same level of discrimination as with things like race? Should it be the modern day discrimination based on something that should be irrelevant that matters (and if it is relevant, such as when hiring basketball players, such discrimination would be allowed, which is already the rule).
Any comparisons to race on this topic is unfounded as race is already a protected class and I don't know of any mainstream religion that discriminates based on color.
Religion was an integral part of opposition to interracial marriages in the United States. In the case Loving v. Virginia, the case then ended up striking down bans on interracial marriage, the trial judge stated "Almighty God created the races white, black, yellow, malay and red, and he placed them on separate continents. And, but for the interference with his arrangement, there would be no cause for such marriage. The fact that he separated the races shows that he did not intend for the races to mix." [1]
[1] https://www.law.cornell.edu/supremecourt/text/388/1
> I think the burden on the customer to go to any other bakery is less than the burden of imposing on one's religious freedom.
This isn't at all clear to me. Even if the burdens were mismatched, I think the fact that on the one side you have private individuals and on the other you have commercial entities is an important point that you are leaving out.
That's a valid point. Organizations can't have religious beliefs, so it would seem to me that if you have an LLC or are incorporated, you can't discriminate based on things like that. But, if you're just using the DBA model or self-employed without even a DBA, you could be allowed to.
It'd make people really consider whether forming an LLC is worth it. There's a lot of benefits that come with it, but it also means you can no longer discriminate based on "religious freedom".
Sure, this couple could have easily found another bakery to get their the cake. But, do we really want to allow business owners to reject service and make people from certain groups feel dejected and out of place?
Is the answer for a gay couple in such a place to just leave their hometown?
They weren't a minority until sustained campaigning. Even now I know a number of people who've been rejected by their families for queerness. In "modern, urban" parts of the UK.
Bigotry has a nasty habit of getting in your face and making itself impossible to ignore. Sometimes violently.
Google maps link:
https://www.google.com/maps/place/Masterpiece+Cakeshop/@39.6...
Of note: the educational institution just below Marston Lake on S. Pierce St.
What happens when it's the pharmacy or grocery store? Or their kid's hockey coach or piano teacher? Or the only car mechanic in town?
I generally believe in a business' right to refuse service but I wrestle with situations like this.
If cake is art, then, we shouldn't force an artist to do something he doesn't wanna. That's very clearly free speech, although the reason is f'ing awful. Is cake art? I dont know.
But I don't think there's a general right to refuse service based on arbitrary beliefs. DOUBLY so when you're a medical professional.
And to the bully comment, there is an expectation in the free world that someone who enters the service industry serves people based on their interest in the product and nothing else. You're free to be as shitty and intolerant as you want to be in your private residence.
Look at California's Proposition 8, for example. The text of it explicitly carved an exemption out of the state constitution's equal protection clause. The expressed notion was that everybody is equal before the law except gay people.
Tyranny of the majority is a common bug in democracies, which is why equal protection is important. As history shows, letting majorities oppress minorities leads to horrific results. Which is why equal protection is a vital principle of American government.
Your theory of tolerance is appealing but wrong. Minorities should not have to segregate themselves away from bigots. Separate but equal isn't equal.
You assume they wanted to get the cake. If you assume instead they wanted to get the baker - either in advance (knowing he'd refuse because of his beliefs that he didn't exactly hide), or after the refusal which offended them - then all of it makes perfect sense.
> I realize it is a matter of principle for both sides but why do both political wings in the US feel compelled to force those with opposing belief systems to comply with their belief system?
Because they can? Obviously it is pleasant (at least for some people) to have others to bow to your moral superiority, even more pleasant if you can do it using the vast powers of the government. I mean, a lot of people spend sleepless nights arguing with somebody wrong on the internet. Now if they have a chance to actually do something about it - like making being wrong punishable, make those outgroup bastards suffer, make them not have their wrong opinions anymore or at least be afraid to have them openly - why wouldn't many people take it? Experience proves they would.
> Tolerance goes both ways, if someone is being a jerk to you avoid them don't bully them into doing things your way.
That's the old way, unfortunately. The new way is if you think somebody is being a jerk, you are allowed to be as much jerk as you want to them, and then some, because you're Fighting For The Right Side. Yes, I don't like it either, but I don't see any significant cultural backlash against it. On the contrary, I see only more escalation of jerk-ness.
Personally, I thought that the majority ruling and the dissent were both pretty compelling. I'm not sure where I would have come down on this issue.
[1] https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/17pdf/16-111_j4el.pdf
My local barber shop (who are really nice guys) nearly got into this situation a few years ago. On the day in question, all 3 barbers working were devout Muslim men who cannot touch a woman other than their wife. A woman came in looking for a men's cut. They refused. It made the news. They resolved it outside of courts amicably.
But what happens long term if everyone is allowed to discriminate against anyone they like so long as they wrap their beliefs up in a religious reasoning? Does society not lose out as we break off from interacting with those of other cultures?
>The Colorado Court of Appeals ruled that Mr. Phillips’s free speech rights had not been violated, noting that the couple had not discussed the cake’s design before Mr. Phillips turned them down.
This is a public business refusing service to a person(s) because of their sexual orentiation.
This is no different than refusing service to an interracial couple because you dont believe in race-mixing.
Yes, they could have gone to another bakery but that isn’t the point. Do you understand why anti-discriminatory laws exist? Step out of your privileged bubble and read some fucking civil rights and LGBT history.
As far as I know, the baker did not refuse to sell the gay couple a wedding cake.
He refused to put the inscription on top himself. He offered the couple to either buy a pre-made cake with a standard inscription or – if they didn't want that (because it's obviously lower quality than a 100% hand-made cake) – to go to another bakery he recommended.
Presumably (but I don't know if he actually offered this) he would have been okay with selling his cake and the gay couple having someone else inscribe the cake.
Although the blogs loved to depict the case as "gay-hater refusing service to gays", it was really a case of "religious baker doesn't want to personally write on top, because he felt in this way he was giving his blessing".
We're currently seeing a rise in white supremacist thinking, so much so that people are calling it a second Nadir. [1] And the religious motivations for gender bias are even more blatant. I don't think it'll be too many more years before we see a case where somebody refuses to serve black people or unaccompanied women and claims a religious motivation. I'm sure the Supreme Court won't accept that, but I don't know how they'll justify one sort of "sincere religious" bigotry but not the other.
[1] The first being the late 1800s through the early 1900s: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nadir_of_American_race_relatio...
I'd have to agree with that decision. If you want to run a business, you shouldn't be allowed to refuse people service based on their sexual orientation, race, level of education, sex, religion, etc.
And that's the major issue. Under freedom of speech you cannot be compelled by the state to endorse things you find distasteful, and cake creation is reasonably qualified as an expression of speech. By contrast, I do not think one could argue that giving somebody the keys to a room is any sort of expression.
This is clearly without regard to American law, I'm sure it conflicts, but that's where my views lie on this :)
That's just at the high level if you can actually get the law to function. Which is itself a huge question. That's where you get into questions like what is sexual imagery? What is hate speech? Who defines that? For instance back in the more puritanical times of the US, which really was not all that long ago, there were numerous laws against indecent material. And again the problem regularly faced is how do you define it? Consider all the content that would be naturally ambiguous. Consider other content that intentionally slides in or out of the restrictions for whatever end. Not so easy!
This is very important because freedom of speech also has the nuance in that there's also protects against compelled speech. And on this there's a couple of really interesting components. The courts have ruled a wide range of things from stained glass windows to even topless dancing as expressions protected by the first amendment, and so 'cake art' almost certainly falls within this protection. This is even implied in the price. Wedding cakes can run hundreds of dollars, yet the cost of the ingredients and even labor is a tiny fraction of that. People are paying for the artistic expression of the person creating the cake.
A different argument might be that nobody could think that the baker creating the cake was itself an endorsement of gay marriage. One of the many interesting 'friend of the court' filings here dealt with this. There was an interesting case in New Hampshire who's state slogan is Live Free or Die. This was (is?) emblazoned on all license plates from the state, but one individual took issue with this as it did align with their own moral beliefs, and so they sued the state and this case ended up at the US supreme court. The state lost. The point here is that nobody could reasonably believe that the individual with 'life free or die' on the license plate was actually endorsing such a view, since it was a standard part of the kit for everybody - yet even when no individual can reasonably believe that some form of speech might be endorsing a view (or reflective of the individual who is indirectly 'expressing' such a view), one cannot be compelled to expressions that they find offensive.