Bake Me a Cake, Redux

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The Colorado civil rights commissioners and LGBT activists share a set of core beliefs on what is acceptable as religious dissent—and the extent of state power in compelling artistic expression that violates the religious beliefs of a provider of creative services. Meanwhile, conservative Christian artisans have a different set of core beliefs at odds with the progressives. Consider, however, who is supporting cultural diversity here and who supports state-imposed uniformity.

2 Comments for “Bake Me a Cake, Redux”

  1. posted by JohnInCA on

    If you want to characterize enforcing non-discrimination laws against bakers to be “state-imposed uniformitiy”, you should be aware theat Phillips, or at least the ADF lawyers who defended him before the SCOTUS, are also on-board with that.

    When asked if a make-up artist or hair-style artist could be compelled by non-discrimination laws, the lawyer said yes.

    When asked if Phillips could be compelled to bake a wedding cake for an interracial couple, the lawyers said yes.

    They also said that chefs, architects, and cupcake bakers weren’t conveying a real “message”, regardless of what event their goods were for.

    So you can drop the canard that Phillips and his ADF lawyers don’t support “state-imposed uniformity”. They do. They just don’t support it when it comes to gay people.

  2. posted by Jorge on

    “Senior U.S. District Judge Wiley T. Daniel said the Colorado Commission on Civil Rights and Colorado Civil Rights Division Director Aubrey Elenis had shown evidence of “bad faith” by filing a formal complaint against him in October over his refusal to create a cake to celebrate a gender transition.”

    An interesting argument that has to be put to the test at trial. It hardly needs to be said here that dismissals require some reason why it’s impossible to use the evidence at hand to win the argument at trial.

    As noted by the judge, one thing that’s important to remember about the Colorado Civil Rights Commission (which is the final administrative appeal level in Colorado’s discrimination cases) is that the Supreme Court once held that this same commission treated the same plaintiff on a previous occasion with “a clear and impermissible hostility toward the sincere religious beliefs that motivated his objection.”

    As such we cannot assume for the sake of the argument that the Commission is entitled to the deference of an objective decision-making body. It got spanked pretty hard on “Masterpiece I”, and no information is available suggesting that it has taken any kind of reform that would give greater confidence to its objectivity–evidence of such had to be presented at the motion to dismiss.

    One of the things I’ve learned from reading other Supreme Court decisions is that evidence of objectivity is routinely presented by lower court judges on appeal. Judges are required to take out their law books and say, “I am using this legal formula in this part of the process” to comply with such things as advisory sentencing guidelines and appeals made because sentencing laws were changed after conviction. These statements of objectivity are written into their decisions, even one or two-page form orders with checkboxes stating “I did this, I did this, I did this, I ruled this” will be accepted. This is part of the Constitution’s guarantee of due process of law.

    As such, the judge is right to present the mere existence of an unfavorable action by the Commission as a reason to deny dismissal. I won’t read more into the decision than that, much though I may like to.

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