Colorado’s high court rejects appeal of Christian ordered to bake gay ‘wedding’ cake
The Colorado Supreme Court has rejected an appeal from a
Christian baker accused of
discrimination for
declining to make a cake for a homosexual “wedding.”
Attorneys for cake shop owner Jack Phillips are reviewing their
options in the wake of the high court’s refusal Monday to review Masterpiece
Cakeshop v. Craig.
“We asked the Colorado Supreme Court to take this case to ensure
that government understands that its duty is to protect the people’s freedom to
follow their beliefs personally and professionally,” Alliance Defending Freedom
(ADF) Senior Counsel Jeremy Tedesco said in a statement, “not
force them to violate those beliefs as the price of earning a living.”
“Jack, who has happily served people of all backgrounds for
years, simply exercised the long-cherished American freedom to decline to use
his artistic talents to promote a message and event with which he disagrees,
and that freedom shouldn’t be placed in jeopardy for anyone,” Tedesco
continued. “We are evaluating all legal options to preserve this freedom for
Jack.”
The Colorado Civil Rights Commission ordered Jack Phillips and
his staff to produce cakes for same-sex celebrations in December
2013. The commission also ordered Phillip to re-educate his staff
and to file quarterly “compliance” reports for two years.
The order stemmed from a complaint by same-sex couple Charlie Craig and Davis
Mullins alleging that Phillips discriminated against them “due to their sexual
orientation” by refusing to make them a “wedding” cake.
Phillips had told the men he does not create cakes for same-sex
“weddings” when they made the July 2012 request in his Lakewood, CO, cake shop.
“I’ll make you birthday cakes, shower cakes, sell you cookies
and brownies,” Phillips said. “I just don’t make cakes for same-sex weddings.”
Homosexual “marriage” was not yet legal in Colorado, so the men
had planned to conduct their ceremony in Massachusetts and then subsequently
celebrate in Colorado.
After the lower court’s 2013 ruling that Phillips violated the Colorado
Anti-Discrimination Act (CADA), the Colorado Court of Appeals upheld the
decision in 2015.
Phillips has also stated his stance is not limited to homosexual
“weddings,” and that he declines to make cakes for other things that violate
his religious beliefs.
“It’s not just the cakes for the same-sex weddings; I haven’t
singled out that one issue as something that I won’t do,” Phillips said in an
ADF video. “I also don’t make cakes for bachelor parties. I don’t make
Halloween cakes or anything involving witchcraft or demons. Sometimes it seems
like I’ve turned down more cakes in a day than I’ve taken orders for.”
Phillips has also said that restricting how he lives his life as
a Christian to simply on Sunday would be impossible.
“For us to limit what we do because of a public accommodation
act says, ‘We don’t want God to be part of our lives except on Sunday,’” he
said. “No, we want him to run our lives, through out lives, every day and any
way that he wants.”
Phillips, who has operated Masterpiece Cakeshop since 1993, has
stopped making wedding cakes altogether while his case is in litigation.
