SCOTUS rules in favor of the “Masterpiece” baker. Sort of.

This ruling is being crowed (from the right) or denounced (from the left) as something quite a bit larger than I think it will turn out to be in the long run. In a 7-2 decision, the Supreme Court ruled in favor of the baker in the Masterpiece bake shop case. The baker had refused to make a wedding cake for a gay couple, despite Colorado law saying that businesses could not discriminate based on sexual orientation.

But this isn’t a massive “religious freedom / bigotry trumps all else” ruling, as was being sought by the plaintiff’s deep-pocket supporters. The actual ruling is being described as “narrow” because it’s very dependent on the facts in this case, rather than being a new principle of law being established.

The court found that

1. Yes, states can and should protect the civil rights of gay people, and can do so under the Constitution.
2. The plaintiff’s religious beliefs do need to be taken into account, but were dismissed with hostility by the state commission that originally ruled against him.
3. The plaintiff had a basis in 2012 — prior to Obergefell and the state okaying gay marriage — to believe that he was on defensible legal grounds in how he acted.
4. The commission had ruled very differently in the case of bakers refusing to produce anti-gay cake decorations, declining to use some of the same rationales they made in those decisions in this one.

The court sort of leaves it open as to how to balanced sincere religious beliefs with Constitutionally permissible protection of individuals who might be discriminated against through those beliefs. That means we will likely see a lot more litigation around this matter. One thing the ruling points out is that showing hostility toward religious and philosophical beliefs (as commission members were shown to have done) makes it easier to stake a claim that religious freedom under the First Amendment is being violated. The court was able to find that the law was not being applied in a religiously neutral fashion, neither favoring nor disfavoring religious beliefs; the problem was not that the law itself was discriminatory, but the way the state commission went about applying it.

But the ruling also makes it clear that the current facts on the ground (esp. Obergefell) have changed things since this matter first came up (i.e., the questionable legality of same-sex marriage is not something a future business person can use as a defense). It also strongly affirmed that “the laws and the Constitution can, and in some instances must, protect gay persons and gay couples in the exercise of their civil rights.”

That’s not necessarily all a bad thing, even if the headlines around the case are disheartening.

Supreme Court rules for Colorado baker in same-sex wedding cake case – CNNPolitics
The Supreme Court ruled in favor of a Colorado baker who refused to bake a cake to celebrate the marriage of a same sex couple because of a religious objection.

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