Salem Books – an imprint of Regnery Publishing – will publish Jack Phillips’ memoir, The Baker. Phillips became a household name in 2012 after the Colorado pastry chef refused to make a wedding cake for a same sex couple. The lawsuit was eventually argued in front of the Supreme Court, who decided 7-2 in favor of Phillips.
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by Kevin Daley The Supreme Court lifted an order Monday punishing a Christian baker in Oregon who refused to produce a wedding cake for a same sex couple, telling a lower court to reconsider the dispute in light of the 2018 Masterpiece Cakeshop decision. The decision keeps a contentious social dispute over the rights of religious dissenters and LGBT patrons off the high court’s docket in the near term. The Oregon case is in many respects a redux of the 2018 Masterpiece Cakeshop decision, which pertained to an Evangelical baker in Colorado. Though the justices found for the baker because a state panel displayed animus towards his beliefs, the Court did not say whether conservative religious believers can cite the First Amendment in refusing to accommodate a same-sex wedding. Monday’s dispute arose in Oregon in 2013 when Aaron and Melissa Klein, who created custom baked goods through their business “Sweet Cakes by Melissa,” declined to produce a wedding cake for a lesbian couple, Rachel Cryer and Laurel Bowman. The Kleins are Christians who believe marriage was instituted as a union of men and women. Cryer and Bowman filed a complaint with a state anti-discrimination panel. In turn, the Kleins argued…
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by Rachel del Guidice A Colorado baker is being sued for a third time for refusing to design custom cakes that he says run contrary to his religious beliefs. Jack Phillips, the owner of Masterpiece Cakeshop in Lakewood, Colorado—first sued in 2012 for declining to create a custom cake for a same-sex wedding because of his traditional Christian beliefs—is being sued again, this time for not baking a “birthday cake” to celebrate the gender transition of Autumn Scardina, who now identifies as a transgender woman, according to The Christian Post. In June 2018, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in favor of Phillips 7-2, holding that the Colorado Commission of Civil Rights—which had ruled that Phillips had discriminated unlawfully—demonstrated “clear and impermissible hostility” toward Phillips and his Christian belief that marriage is the union of one man and one woman, as The Daily Signal previously reported. After Phillips’ Supreme Court win, he was sued a second time by the state, this time on Scardina’s behalf, but the suit was dropped when Phillips countersued. A Colorado baker is being sued for a third time for refusing to design custom cakes that he says run contrary to his religious beliefs. Jack Phillips,…
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by Kevin Daley The Supreme Court’s conservative bloc released a short, little-noticed statement on Jan. 22 that portends far-reaching changes for religious liberty. The statement — which Justice Samuel Alito authored and Justices Clarence Thomas, Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh joined — criticized the 1990 Employment Division v. Smith decision, a landmark ruling that held laws interfering with religious exercise are constitutional provided that they apply to everyone and are neutrally enforced. “In Employment Division v. Smith the Court drastically cut back on the protection provided by the free exercise clause,” Alito wrote. “In this case, however, we have not been asked to revisit that decision.” In the understated parlance of the Supreme Court, it was a clarion call for litigants to bring cases challenging Smith. It was all the more remarkable in that four justices signed onto the statement, an uncommon occurrence for opinions of this nature. The late Justice Antonin Scalia authored the 5-4 Smith ruling. Outrage at the decision prompted passage of the 1993 Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA), which requires courts to subject federal action that infringes on religious practice to the highest degree of scrutiny. More recently, something approaching an anti-Smith consensus has developed on the right. Most…
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by Kelsey Harkness The former owners of an Oregon bakery, ordered to pay $135,000 in damages for declining to make a cake for a same-sex wedding, are appealing their case to the Supreme Court. Lawyers for Aaron and Melissa Klein filed a petition Monday asking the Supreme Court to reverse an earlier decision handed down by the state that forced them to shut down their family bakery. “Freedom of speech has always included the freedom not to speak the government’s message,” said Kelly Shackelford, president and CEO of First Liberty, a nonprofit legal organization representing the Kleins. “This case can clarify whether speech is truly free if it is government mandated.” An administrative judge for the Oregon Bureau of Labor and Industries ruled in July 2015 that the Kleins had discriminated against a lesbian couple, Rachel and Laurel Bowman-Cryer, on the basis of their sexual orientation. The judge ordered the Kleins to pay the $135,000 for physical, emotional, and mental damages. The Kleins appealed that ruling to the Oregon Court of Appeals in April 2016, and that court upheld the state agency’s decision. Under Oregon law, it is illegal for businesses to refuse service based on a customer’s sexual…
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by Thomas Jipping Jack Phillips owns Masterpiece Cakeshop in Lakewood, Colorado, and is himself a master baker. He’s in trouble with the state of Colorado for declining to create a custom cake for an event because doing so would violate his religious beliefs. If that sounds familiar, it’s because Phillips has already taken a similar case all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court, which ruled in his favor on June 4. Here’s the background. In 2012, Phillips declined the request by a same-sex couple marrying in Massachusetts that he create a custom cake for their reception in Colorado. The Colorado Civil Rights Commission, in a ruling affirmed by the state courts, concluded that Phillips violated a state law prohibiting discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation in businesses and other places of public accommodation. The case, as the Supreme Court would describe it, presented a conflict between the government’s authority to protect individuals against discrimination and “the right of all persons to exercise fundamental freedoms under the First Amendment.” This conflict is recurring, in different settings, more and more often. To understand this conflict properly requires focusing on the reason that Phillips declined to make this particular cake. He…
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by Monica Burke After a Lexington, Virginia, restaurant, the Red Hen, refused service to White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders on Friday, commentators on the left immediately seized upon a false analogy. They likened that incident to the Masterpiece Cakeshop case, the case of the Christian baker in Colorado who refused to craft a custom cake for a same-sex wedding. That attempt at an analogy reveals that the left still does not understand the Supreme Court’s ruling in Masterpiece Cakeshop v. Colorado Civil Rights Commission. Jack Phillips, the baker, serves all customers, but cannot serve all events. He declined to make a wedding cake for a same-sex couple not because of their identity, because he could not communicate a message that violated his religious beliefs. He even offered the couple any other item in his store. Meanwhile, the Red Hen denied service to Sanders precisely because of who she is. They did not refuse to create a custom order that would have endorsed views they disagreed with. They denied her service, period. The false analogy also reveals the hypocrisy of the left’s position. They accuse people like Phillips, who serves everyone regardless of who they are, of discrimination,…
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by Aaron and Melissa Klein We are thrilled for our friend, Jack Phillips, the owner of Masterpiece Cakeshop who recently won his case at the Supreme Court. Like Jack, we know what it is like to be treated unfairly by a state agency and mocked, threatened, and abused by critics. We can only imagine the relief Jack is experiencing. At the same time, we wonder what the future holds for our case, our lost business, and our family. Ours may be, as Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote, the case that allows “further elaboration in the courts.” And we are encouraged to know that seven justices of the Supreme Court agree that a state’s hostility to the religious beliefs of its citizens will not be tolerated under the First Amendment. In one sense, Jack’s case is very similar to ours. We too declined to create a custom cake that would have required us to express a message our faith teaches against. And, like Jack, we faced a commissioner—Brad Avakian, commissioner of the Oregon Bureau of Labor and Industry at the time—who was hostile to our religion and biased in his consideration of our case. [ The liberal Left continue to push their radical agenda against American values.…
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by Arya Hodjat The U.S. Justice Department will intensify its efforts to bring up lawsuits against municipalities that discriminate against religious establishments, Attorney General Jeff Sessions announced Wednesday. The initiative, called the “Place to Worship Initiative,” is centered on bringing cases against towns and cities that use zoning laws to prevent houses of worship — churches and mosques, for example — from building. “In recent years, the cultural climate has become less hospitable to people of faith and to religious belief,” Sessions said. “Many Americans have felt that their freedom to practice their faith has been under attack.” The announcement came during an event for the Orthodox Union Advocacy Center — an Orthodox Jewish advocacy group — in Washington, D.C. Sessions also announced the Justice Department would be filing a lawsuit against a New Jersey town for denying the building of an Orthodox Jewish synagogue. “Religious Americans have heard themselves called deplorables,” Sessions said. “They’ve heard themselves called bitter clingers.” Sessions referred to comments made by Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama during their presidential campaigns in 2016 and 2008, respectively. Clinton made no reference to religion in her 2016 speech. Heather Weaver, a senior staff attorney for the ACLU, told…
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The Family Action Council of Tennessee (FACT) has joined 32 other family policy councils nationwide in filing a friend-of-the-court brief on behalf of a Colorado baker accused of discrimination for declining to bake a cake for a same-sex wedding. This fall, the U.S. Supreme Court will hear the major, closely-watched case involving Jack Phillips and his family business, Masterpiece Cakeshop. The Colorado Court of Appeals ruled that a state law could force Phillips to create a custom cake that conveys a message contrary to what he believes as a Christian. Phillips and his attorneys petitioned the U.S. Supreme Court to take up the case. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NMn3WycWJsg The amicus brief was drafted by David French, an attorney and senior writer for National Review who lives in Columbia, about 45 miles south of Nashville. In a letter to supporters, David Fowler, the president of FACT, said joining the amicus brief is in keeping with “our mission to defend free speech and religious liberty.” The Supreme Court has received at least 45 friend-of-the-court briefs in support of the baker. The support comes from 479 creative professionals, 20 states including Tennessee, and 86 members of Congress, all Republicans. A variety of legal experts, civil rights advocates and…
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