Persecuting Baronelle Stutzman Shows Lack of Decency

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Washington state’s highest court ruled that Barronelle Stutzman discriminated against longtime customers Rob Ingersoll and Curt Freed when she refused to do the flowers for their 2013 wedding because of her religious opposition to participating in a same-sex marriage. Instead, Stutzman suggested several other florists in the area who would help them.

Her lawyers will attempt to take the case to the U.S. Supreme Court, where A Colorado case involving a baker who would not make a wedding cake for a same-sex wedding is pending.

“I knew Rob was gay for all those years, and it made no difference to me,” Ms. Stutzman said. “I chose not to participate in one event, and that’s what this is all about. If Rob walked into my shop tomorrow, I’d wait on him for another 10 years.”

Ingersoll and Freed should have respected her right to decline and found another Seattle-area florist. That would have been the decent thing to do. Decency, however, is an increasingly rare commodity.

14 Comments for “Persecuting Baronelle Stutzman Shows Lack of Decency”

  1. posted by Jorge on

    Such trivial matters will have had no impact on the 2016 election. Trump only chose Pence as VP because of his affable nature and executive experience.

  2. posted by Tom Scharbach on

    SCOTUS might take up one or both of the Colorado/Washington cases, or it may not. The Colorado case (Masterpiece Cakeshop, Ltd. v. Colorado Civil Rights) is awaiting certiorari review, and if the Court is going to take up the issue, it will likely take up the Colorado case.

    If SCOTUS does take up one or both of the cases, the religious freedom question will turn on the application of Employment Division and Boerne to public accommodations laws. If the Court follows its own precedent, and is unwilling to overturn or modify Justice Scalia’s opinion in Employment Division and/or Justice Kennedy’s opinion in Boerne, the baker/florist will have an uphill battle.

    As you may recall, the Court created a three-part test (“substantial burden”, “compelling state interest”, “least restrictive means”) for religious freedom exemptions in Sherbert (1963), and that test was applied to a school-attendance law of general application in Yoder (1972). However, Employment Division (1990) ruled that the Sherbert test was not applicable to laws of general application, and reverted to the Reynolds (1879) “rational basis” standard for laws of general application. In response, Congress enacted the Religious Freedom Restoration Act in 1993, reestablishing the Sherbert/Yoder three-part test to all laws, state and federal. In turn, Boerne (1997) invalidated the federal Religious Freedom Restoration Act of 1993 as to the states, holding that the Congress could not impose a religious freedom standard on the states that was higher than the Constitution required. A number of states responded to Boerne by enacting state-level versions of RFRA, but most did not.

    Neither Colorado nor Washington have enacted legislation codifying the Sherbert/Yoder three-part test into law. As a result, unless the Court overturns or modifies Justice Scalia’s opinion in Employment Division and/or Justice Kennedy’s opinion in Boerne, the constitutional standard that will be applied is almost certain to be the Employment Divison‘s “substantial burden”, “rational purpose” test.

    I don’t think that either the Colorado baker or the Washington florist can prevail under that standard. Courts have consistently held that public accommodations laws are laws of general application, and that the state has either a compelling interest and/or a rational basis for ensuring non-discrimination. Even if the baker or florist can demonstrate that baking a wedding cake for a same-sex couple or supplying flowers for a same-sex wedding constitutes a “substantial burden” upon their religious exercise, the baker/florist is going to run into that brick wall. And it seems unlikely that either the baker or the florist will be able to demonstrate a “substantial burden” that will meet the constitutional standard, because no court has ruled to date that doing business in the normal course constitutes a substantial burden.

    My guess is that the Court will decline to take up either case (as it did in the New Mexico photographer case). We’ll see.

    If the Court does take up either case, Judge Gorsuch will almost certainly be seated by the time the case is argued, and we’ll get an early indication of where Justice Gorsuch stands on religious freedom exemptions not decided under the federal RFRA.

  3. posted by Russ Hemphill on

    They didn’t live is Seattle
    They lived in the Tri-Cities.

    Baronelle could have adhered to her Christian principles of helping out her friend and long time customer. Something like Do unto Others and
    Love thy Neighbor. . .

    But here is the opinion letter

    http://www.seattletimes.com/opinion/why-a-good-friend-is-suing-me-the-arlenes-flowers-story/

    • posted by Jorge on

      Baronelle could have adhered to her Christian principles of helping out her friend and long time customer. Something like Do unto Others and
      Love thy Neighbor. . .

      She… did.

  4. posted by Tom Scharbach on

    For those interested, the Washington Supreme Court’s unanmious 58-page decision (emphasis mine) closes with:

    The State of Washington bars discrimination in public accommodations on the basis of sexual orientation. Discrimination based on same-sex marriage constitutes discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation. We therefore hold that the conduct for which Stutzman was cited and fined in this case-refusing her commercially marketed wedding floral services to Ingersoll and Freed because theirs would be a same-sex wedding-constitutes sexual orientation discrimination under the WLAD. We also hold that the WLAD may be enforced against Stutzman because it does not infringe any constitutional protection. As applied in this case, the WLAD does not compel speech or association. And assuming that it substantially burdens Stutzman’s religious free exercise, the WLAD does not violate her right to religious free exercise under either the First Amendment or article I, section 11 because it is a neutral, generally applicable law that serves our state government’s compelling interest in eradicating discrimination in public accommodations. We affirm the trial court’s rulings.

    The Court’s conclusion illustrates the problem that the “baker, florist, photographer” cases have encountered in state courts and will most likely encounter if and when the Supreme Court takes up one or more of the cases. Note that the Washington court did not take up the question of whether or not supplying flowers to a same-sex wedding constituted a “substantial burden” on the florist’s free exercise of religion because the question was irrelevant to the legal outcome — even had supplying flowers created a “substantial burden”, the florist would not have prevailed.

    • posted by Jorge on

      “Neutral” my ***.

    • posted by Tom Scharbach on

      “Neutral” my ***.

      The phrase used by the Washington Supreme Court (“neutral, generally applicable law”) is a direct reference to the legal standard established by the Court in Employment Division. Justice Scalia’s opinion has a lengthy discussion of the history, meaning and application of the phrase, and it might be worth your time to read his opinion if you have questions about what it means and how the courts apply the standard.

      • posted by Jorge on

        Oooooh, a Scalia-Stevens coalition.

        From the abstract:

        “Although a State would be “prohibiting the free exercise [of religion]” in violation of the Clause if it sought to ban the performance of (or abstention from) physical acts solely because of their religious motivation, the Clause does not relieve an individual of the obligation to comply with a law that incidentally forbids (or requires) the performance of an act that his religious belief requires (or forbids) if the law is not specifically directed to religious practice and is otherwise constitutional as applied to those who engage in the specified act for nonreligious reasons.”

        I have never held the same opinion on the Peyote case more than a couple of times in a row. I hate drug use and I love law and order, but I don’t want to destroy religious practice, either, especially relatively harmless practice.

        I also refuse to concede that Obergefel is constitutional based on the above standard. As you know, I believe it chooses one religious belief over another. This opinion explicitly states the government may not “lend its power to one or the other side in controversies over religious authority or dogma”.

        Under the above summary, you can pull a Donald Trump and say “Show me how to discriminate based on religion”, and then write a law that accomplishes the result with text and measures that fall just short of triggering the alarm.

        (Not so. That’s why the Supreme Court asked the lower court’s opinion).

        So. The lower court was writing its opinion on a law not of its own writing and creation.

        “Laws,” we said, are made for the government of actions, and while they cannot interfere with mere religious belief and opinions, they may with practices

        I suppose it could be acceptable to enslave the florist-baker coalition for a brief period of time.

        We should consider the words of somebody really long dead and affirm that the courts alone cannot protect our constitutional rights. Oh, here we go. “Values that are protected against government interference through enshrinement in the Bill of Rights are not thereby banished from the political process. . . . It is therefore not surprising that a number of States have made an exception to their drug laws for sacramental peyote use. But to say that a nondiscriminatory religious practice exemption is permitted, or even that it is desirable, is not to say that it is constitutionally required, and that the appropriate occasions for its creation can be discerned by the courts.” [citations omitted]

        It should therefore not surprise you to know that I find myself agreeing with Blackmun’s dissent in this case (especially the parts he joined O’Connor on), though I think it is a close question.

      • posted by Jorge on

        Therefore,

        Neutral my ***.

        • posted by JohnInCA on

          Then argue against all non-discrimination laws, Jorge.

          Acting like such laws that include gay people are somehow unique and alien, while such laws that include sex, race, ethnicity, national origin, veteran status, disability, marital status, being a cop, genetic history, and so-on are all dandy-as-candy? Does not convince anyone.

          Which is why these religious liberty arguments fail over and over again: no one can successfully argue that non-discrimination laws that include gay people are substantively different then non-discrimination laws that include other people.

          • posted by Jorge on

            Then argue against all non-discrimination laws, Jorge.

            That is nonsensical. Not all anti-discrimination laws take sides in religious controversies.

  5. posted by TJ on

    Yes. decency is in short supply.

    It would be easy for the alledged religious freedom defenders to craft a reasonable bill to fix this problem.

    Thus far we have seen a series of bills that needlessly attack civil rights and plays favorites with religious groups.

    People who complain about the lack of decency and civility in politics, probably shouldnt live in glass houses.

  6. posted by JohnInCA on

    I like how people try to make these arguments that the First Amendment gives them an out to non-discrimination laws that cover gay people and seem blissfully unaware that, were they to win, pretty much all non-discrimination laws would come crashing down.

    It selling flowers to a gay couple is too much of a burden, then selling flowers to a Catholic man, a black woman, and Irish does-not-obey-your-gender-binary… all that is equally defensible.

  7. posted by Russ Hemphill on

    “The grave danger is to disown our neighbors. When we do so, we deny their humanity and our own humanity without realizing it. Pope Francis

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