Bigotry by technicality, fortunately SCOTUS says people need to be free of the indignities of discrimination, regardless of ideological preferences.
The reality is, as the ACLU lawyer put it that… ”there is no general First Amendment exception to laws protecting LGBT customers from discrimination.”
More interesting will be Jack Phillips’s next refusal… of an atheist, Buddhist, Hindu, Muslim etc... couple’s request for a cake.
The SCOTUS ruling kicks the can down the road in terms of the specific case but continues the movement to delimit the “right to discriminate because of my religious ‘fee-fees’”.
SCOTUS voted 7-2 in the case of the Christian Colorado baker who refused to make a same-sex couple's wedding cake. The court says he did not receive a fair hearing by the Colorado Civil Rights Commission.
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Supreme Court ruled Monday for a Colorado baker who wouldn’t make a wedding cake for a same-sex couple in a limited decision that leaves for another day the larger issue of whether a business can invoke religious objections to refuse service to gay and lesbian people.
The justices’ decision turned on what the court described as anti-religious bias on the Colorado Civil Rights Commission when it ruled against baker Jack Phillips. The justices voted 7-2 that the commission violated Phillips’ rights under the First Amendment.
Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Sonia Sotomayor dissented. “There is much in the court’s opinion with which I agree,” Ginsburg wrote of Kennedy’s repeated references to protecting the rights of gay people. “I strongly disagree, however, with the court’s conclusion that Craig and Mullins should lose this case.”
[...]
The American Civil Liberties Union, which represented the couple in its legal fight, said it was pleased the court did not endorse a broad religion-based exemption from anti-discrimination laws.
“We read this decision as a reaffirmation of the court’s longstanding commitment to civil rights protections and the reality that the states have the power to protect everyone in America from discrimination, including lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people,” said James Esseks, director of the ACLU LGBT & HIV Project.
The First Amendment’s requirement of religious neutrality is so strong that even if you reach the proper outcome based on a fair and objective understanding of the facts and the law, if you say anything that offends the party with regard to his “religious beliefs” or his declarations thereof, any ruling you make against him will be set aside, because you “tainted” the proceedings with your anti-religious bias.
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In the end, Masterpiece Cakeshop barely resolves anything, and doesn’t even touch the free speech claim at the center of the case. Instead, it punts that question, leaving lower courts (and American society) to continue fighting about how, exactly, Justice Anthony Kennedy should feel about it.
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