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Supreme Court Sides with Baker Who Turned Away Gay Couple

88 points by Amorymeltzer 8y ago

ChrisRR 8y ago
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.
- TangoTrotFox 8y ago
  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.
  - amaccuish 8y ago
    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 :)
    - TangoTrotFox 8y ago
      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!
libc 8y ago
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.
xxpor 8y ago
In a very narrow ruling that creates little binding precedent.
- deanCommie 8y ago
  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.
  - snerbles 8y ago
    Empowered as such business owners may be, remember that they are not free from the consequences of their discrimination.
  - xxpor 8y ago
    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.
    - davorak 8y ago
      > 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.
- sparrish 8y ago
  7-2 decision doesn't sound very narrow to me.
  - dangoor 8y ago
    The ruling has a narrow scope (it was based on the way the lower court deliberated, not so much the substance of the issue).
dorp 8y ago
It is the baker's right to bake a cake for who ever they feel like baking a cake for. You can't force someone to do something.
- pstuart 8y ago
  “We don’t serve coloreds here”
  - cmonreally 8y ago
    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.
    - lev99 8y ago
      Cake shops do custom cakes very often, it's standard business for them.
      - wang_li 8y ago
        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.
        paulmd 8y ago
        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.
samueldavid 8y ago
good news for once today!
dijit 8y ago
idk, this seems fair. 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.
- samueldavid 8y ago
  agree
- codezero 8y ago
  They were buying a wedding cake, and were denied before any design was discussed.
  - dijit 8y ago
    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.
    - paulmd 8y ago
      >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.
craftyguy 8y ago
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?
- knubie 8y ago
  > 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? You would probably be fired, or not hired at all.
  - craftyguy 8y ago
    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.
    - PurpleBoxDragon 8y ago
      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.
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
peterwwillis 8y ago
This is going to be a shitshow soon, so here's a terrible comment to kick things off: 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
- dijit 8y ago
  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.
  - scottmf 8y ago
    They had not even discussed the content of the cake when they were refused service.
- compiler-guy 8y ago
  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.
- nitrix 8y ago
  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.
classichasclass 8y ago
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. IANAL. (edited for typo)
- ordinaryradical 8y ago
  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.
  - PurpleBoxDragon 8y ago
    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?
- cgriswald 8y ago
  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. [1]https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/17pdf/16-111_j4el.pdf https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/17pdf/16-111_j4el.pdf
Matticus_Rex 8y ago
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.
joe_hills 8y ago
You can find the judgement at: https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/17pdf/16-111_j4el.pdf https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/17pdf/16-111_j4el.pdf 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.
- wilsonnb 8y ago
  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.
  - dorchadas 8y ago
    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.
dfundako 8y ago
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.
- samueldavid 8y ago
  in conservative america? good luck with that anytime soon
cromwellian 8y ago
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?
- PurpleBoxDragon 8y ago
  >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.
Brosper 8y ago
How this news is connected with "Hacker News"?
- Tomte 8y ago
  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.
macinjosh 8y ago
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!
- pjc50 8y ago
  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.
  - PurpleBoxDragon 8y ago
    >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).
sgift 8y ago
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.
wilsonnb 8y ago
I suggest that anyone interested in the case read the actual ruling. It's not that long and not hard to understand. [1] 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 https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/17pdf/16-111_j4el.pdf
mabbo 8y ago
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?
remote_phone 8y ago
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.
scottmf 8y ago
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.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
Tomte 8y ago
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".
wpietri 8y ago
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. [1] The first being the late 1800s through the early 1900s: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nadir_of_American_race_relations https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nadir_of_American_race_relatio...
tomatotomato37 8y ago
It seems that takeaway from this is that in a collision of people's rights the explicit rights takes precedent over implicit rights
TangoTrotFox 8y ago
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.

88 points by Amorymeltzer 8y ago

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.

TangoTrotFox 8y ago
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.
- amaccuish 8y ago
  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 :)
  - TangoTrotFox 8y ago
    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!

libc 8y ago

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.

xxpor 8y ago

In a very narrow ruling that creates little binding precedent.

deanCommie 8y ago
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.
- snerbles 8y ago
  Empowered as such business owners may be, remember that they are not free from the consequences of their discrimination.
- xxpor 8y ago
  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.
  - davorak 8y ago
    > 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.
sparrish 8y ago
7-2 decision doesn't sound very narrow to me.
- dangoor 8y ago
  The ruling has a narrow scope (it was based on the way the lower court deliberated, not so much the substance of the issue).

dorp 8y ago

It is the baker's right to bake a cake for who ever they feel like baking a cake for. You can't force someone to do something.

pstuart 8y ago
“We don’t serve coloreds here”
- cmonreally 8y ago
  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.
  - lev99 8y ago
    Cake shops do custom cakes very often, it's standard business for them.
    - wang_li 8y ago
      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.
      - paulmd 8y ago
        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.

samueldavid 8y ago

good news for once today!

dijit 8y ago

idk, this seems fair. 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.

samueldavid 8y ago
agree
codezero 8y ago
They were buying a wedding cake, and were denied before any design was discussed.
- dijit 8y ago
  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.
  - paulmd 8y ago
    >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.

craftyguy 8y ago

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?

knubie 8y ago
> 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? You would probably be fired, or not hired at all.
- craftyguy 8y ago
  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.
  - PurpleBoxDragon 8y ago
    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.

deleted 8y ago

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peterwwillis 8y ago

This is going to be a shitshow soon, so here's a terrible comment to kick things off: 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

dijit 8y ago
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.
- scottmf 8y ago
  They had not even discussed the content of the cake when they were refused service.
compiler-guy 8y ago
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.
nitrix 8y ago
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.

classichasclass 8y ago

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. IANAL. (edited for typo)

ordinaryradical 8y ago
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.
- PurpleBoxDragon 8y ago
  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?
cgriswald 8y ago
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. [1]https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/17pdf/16-111_j4el.pdf https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/17pdf/16-111_j4el.pdf

Matticus_Rex 8y ago

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.

joe_hills 8y ago

You can find the judgement at: https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/17pdf/16-111_j4el.pdf https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/17pdf/16-111_j4el.pdf 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.

wilsonnb 8y ago
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.
- dorchadas 8y ago
  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.

dfundako 8y ago

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.

samueldavid 8y ago
in conservative america? good luck with that anytime soon

cromwellian 8y ago

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?

PurpleBoxDragon 8y ago
>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.

Brosper 8y ago

How this news is connected with "Hacker News"?

Tomte 8y ago
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.

macinjosh 8y ago

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!

pjc50 8y ago
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.
- PurpleBoxDragon 8y ago
  >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).

sgift 8y ago

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.

wilsonnb 8y ago

I suggest that anyone interested in the case read the actual ruling. It's not that long and not hard to understand. [1] 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 https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/17pdf/16-111_j4el.pdf

mabbo 8y ago

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?

remote_phone 8y ago

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.

scottmf 8y ago

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.

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Tomte 8y ago

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".

wpietri 8y ago

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. [1] The first being the late 1800s through the early 1900s: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nadir_of_American_race_relations https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nadir_of_American_race_relatio...

tomatotomato37 8y ago

It seems that takeaway from this is that in a collision of people's rights the explicit rights takes precedent over implicit rights

TangoTrotFox 8y ago

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.