Masterpiece Cakeshop has gone and done it again. Whether or not they were specifically targeted (very likely, imo), they have refused to make a cake for another person they felt was not up to their religious standards. The story is here but I’ve got a few paragraphs below to give you an idea what they did.
The latest claim against Phillips stems from his refusal in June 2017 to make a cake for a transgender woman, Autumn Scardina.
Scardina, a family law attorney, asked for a birthday cake last year that was pink on the inside and blue on the outside, which she said would celebrate her birthday as well as seven years since she transitioned from male to female.
According to a complaint filed July 20, 2017, with the Colorado Civil Rights Division, a woman employee at Phillips’ Masterpiece Cakeshop said they would not make the cake as they did not believe in celebrating gender changes based on religious beliefs and hung up on Scardina. She called back and allegedly was hung up on again.
Scardina said the employee did not object to making the birthday cake until Scardina told her the cake was intended to celebrate both her birthday and the gender transition.
The call and request for the cake apparently came on the very day the US Supreme Court decision came down, so Masterpiece Cakeshop wasted no time in getting back into the hot water.
As a reminder, the US Supreme Court did NOT say that Masterpiece Cakeshop could discriminate against people because of their (Masterpiece’s) religious beliefs. An article on that Supreme Court decision can be found here. The wikipedia link is here. Masterpiece was found guilty of discrimination in 2012 when they refused to make a cake for a wedding of two gay men. They were found guilty by the state of Colorado (Civil Rights Commission), by the Colorado Appeals Court but last year the US Supreme Court, which heard the appeal, ruled that the Civil Rights Commission was inconsistent in how they applied Colorado’s law against discrimination, but they specifically did not rule that Colorado’s law was un-Constitutional. They said they felt that Colorado’s CRC was not as neutral as they should have been towards Phillips’ religion.
The CRC came very close to being eliminated in this last session of Colorado’s legislature by the tactic of one of the houses of the legislature (controlled by Republicans) refusing for a long time to approve the renewal of the CRC. The Democratic Colorado House had approved the renewal, and both houses had passed the budget including funding for the CRC for next year, but that would be the final year had the law creating the CRC been allowed to sunset. At the very last minute, the renewal was passed by both houses and signed into law by the governor.
Now, the CRC has ruled that Masterpiece Cakeshop and Phillips have again discriminated in violation of Colorado’s non-discrimination law in the creation of the special-order cake for Scardina. This is only part of the legal battle going on, as Masterpiece Cakeshop, Phillips and their legal team Alliance Defending Freedom have sued the CRC and Governor John Hickenlooper for persecuting them for sticking to their religious beliefs. Their argument is that they’ll sell baked products to anyone who comes into the shop, but will only make special to-order cakes for people that they don’t feel run counter to their (Phillips’) religious beliefs, which they claim is protected by the First Amendment.
To me, this sounds like it’s going to go right back to the Supreme Court but this time it will be Trump’s two justices who won’t be willing to rule narrowly on the issue but will look to fabricate whole new exemptions for religious beliefs that will broadly allow discrimination to be practiced. Frankly, I wouldn’t want anything from that shop — who knows what additives of a disgusting nature they would put into a cake they were forced into making — but I’m not likely to be discriminated against the way many are.