Colorado is trying to compel the same baker who just won a Supreme Court case into baking a second cake that violates his religious beliefs.

Federalist
Bre Payton

Masterpiece Cakeshop’s Jack Phillips, who won a Supreme Court case in June, is once again being harangued by the Colorado Civil Rights Commission for refusing to bake a cake with a pro-LGBTQ message. Alliance Defending Freedom filed a federal lawsuit late Tuesday night against the commission on his behalf, over the state’s second attempt to compel him to bake a cake with a message that violates his religious beliefs.

Two months ago, the Supreme Court ruled that Phillips ought not to have been forced to bake a cake with a pro-LGBT message for a same-sex couple’s wedding, because the court found that the commission was overtly hostile to the baker’s religious beliefs.

Now, the commission is once again going after Phillips, this time to compel him to bake a cake celebrating a “gender transition.”

On June 26, 2017 — the same day the Supreme Court announced it would take up the cake baking case — an attorney, who is identified in the court filings as Autumn Scardina, asked Phillips to bake a cake that is blue on the outside and pink on the inside to celebrate his decision to live as if he were a woman. When Phillips declined, Scardina filed a complaint with the commission that July, alleging that he was unlawfully discriminated against.

Just weeks after Philip’s victory at the Supreme Court, the commission issued a probable cause determination, stating that there was enough evidence to back up Scardina’s claim that Phillips had broken the law by declining the order for the custom cake.

Phillips is not backing down. He’s suing the commission for violating his constitutional right to live out his religious beliefs and his right to due process under the law.

“The state of Colorado is ignoring the message of the U.S. Supreme Court by continuing to single out Jack for punishment and to exhibit hostility toward his religious beliefs,” ADF’s Kristen Waggoner said in a statement. “Even though Jack serves all customers and simply declines to create custom cakes that express messages or celebrate events in violation of his deeply held beliefs, the government is intent on destroying him — something the Supreme Court has already told it not to do. Neither Jack nor any other creative professionals should be targeted by the government for living consistently with their religious beliefs.”

You can read more about his story here and details about the ongoing lawsuit here.

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He should bake a cake the shape of an ass and fill it with the appropriate matter to send to the commission..

Be nice and gratifying if these officials were recalled. If necessary, forcibly removed.

As a practical matter, if these LBG fucks as a community have sufficient social presence to drive a baker's suit to the Supreme Court, it doesn't sound like they are still deserving of protected class status.

For fuck's sake. We need to start hanging politicians. We need to be hanging them wholesale.

Good God. These people are terminally fucked in the head.

No surprise here. The Supreme Court said the state had expressed hostility to the baker’s religious beliefs and should not. No cakes!

So, this time they will go after him and say nothing about his religious belief, no problem.

quote:

Originally posted by parabellum:
For fuck's sake. We need to start hanging politicians. We need to be hanging them wholesale.

Good God. These people are terminally fucked in the head.

the only way we are ever going to take the country back and to get back to a sense of normalcy is to excise the morons and hacks from society

there is a tipping point coming, its coming fast and it has nothing to do with elections

Why don't they go to a halal butcher and ask for some nice pork chops?

They mean to tell us they couldn't find a gay cake decorator?

Muammar Gaddafi found out what payback was like, eventually.

quote:

Originally posted by konata88:

As a practical matter, if these LBG fucks as a community have sufficient social presence to drive a baker's suit to the Supreme Court, it doesn't sound like they are still deserving of protected class status.

I thought "all" men were created equal. We have so many protected clases, I can't keep track of who is more equal than me!

^^^^^^

If you are a straight, white, Christian male......Everyone

The state finds ‘probable cause’ that Jack Phillips violated the civil rights of someone who has been persistently trolling him with orders for provocative cakes.

National Review
David French

Even after a 7–2 Supreme Court decision protecting Colorado custom baker Jack Phillips from overt religious discrimination, the state is doubling down. It’s participating in and empowering a grotesque campaign of discrimination and harassment that should shock the conscience of sensible Americans.

Phillips, you’ll recall, is the owner of Masterpiece Cakeshop, the bakery at the epicenter of one of the most contentious cases of the Supreme Court’s last term. Phillips had refused to design a custom cake to celebrate a gay wedding, and a clear majority of SCOTUS ruled that the Colorado Civil Rights Commission violated his right to free exercise of religion by demonstrating overt religious animus against him. Commissioners not only denigrated the sincerity of his religious-liberty argument, they applied overt double standards (by allowing bakers to refuse to create ant-gay messages) that were clearly discriminatory.

So Jack won. Colorado lost. But Jack’s ordeal, it turns out, was far from over. By standing up for his First Amendment freedoms, Phillips put a target on his back, and bad-faith, malicious actors aimed and fired.

Here’s what happened. According to a verified complaint filed today by my old colleagues at the Alliance Defending Freedom, on June 26, 2017 — the very day the Supreme Court granted Jack’s request to review his wedding-cake case — a lawyer named Autumn Scardina called Masterpiece Cakeshop and “asked Masterpiece Cakeshop to create a custom cake with ‘a blue exterior and a pink interior’ — a cake ‘design’ that, according to the lawyer,” reflected “the fact that [the lawyer] transitioned from male-to-female and that [the lawyer] had come out as transgender.”

Lest anyone wonder whether this request was made in good faith, consider that this same person apparently made a number of requests to Masterpiece Cakeshop. In September 2017, a caller asked Phillips to design a birthday cake for Satan that would feature an image of Satan smoking marijuana. The name “Scardina” appeared on the caller identification. A few days earlier, a person had emailed Jack asking for a cake with a similar theme — except featuring “an upside-down cross, under the head of Lucifer.” This same emailer reminded Phillips that “religion is a protected class.”

On the very day that Phillips won his case at the Supreme Court, a person emailed with yet another deliberately offensive design request:

I’m thinking a three-tiered white cake. Cheesecake frosting. And the topper should be a large figure of Satan, licking a 9″ black Dildo. I would like the dildo to be an actual working model, that can be turned on before we unveil the cake. I can provide it for you if you don’t have the means to procure one yourself.

And finally, two days later, a person identifying as “Autumn Marie” visited Phillips’s shop and requested a cake featuring a pentagram. According to ADF, “Phillips believes that person was Autumn Scardina.”

Rather than recognizing Scardina’s conduct as nothing more than a bad-faith campaign of harassment, Aubrey Elenis, the director of the Colorado Civil Rights Division, found on June 28 “probable cause” to believe that Phillips violated Scardina’s civil rights when he refused Scardina’s bad-faith request to design a cake celebrating Scardina’s “transition.”

This decision is as foolish as it is malicious. The one weakness of Jack’s Supreme Court case was that he denied the gay couple’s request to custom-design their cake before he knew the design they wanted. That left him open to the charge that he could have designed a cake that contained no obvious expressive message. Phillips countered that compelling him to use his artistic ability to help celebrate an immoral act was a violation of his First Amendment rights no matter the appearance of the cake.

Ultimately, the Supreme Court punted on that key question, but it was clear that even the two dissenting justices would view the case differently if it was about a specific message that Phillips would reject for any customer. And clearly, a cake with a pink middle and blue exterior communicates the message that Scardina is truly female on the inside. The requested message was as painfully obvious as Scardina’s satanic requests.

With its probable-cause finding, the Colorado Civil Rights Division demonstrates it’s as foolish as it is malicious. It has just launched yet another legal campaign against Phillips based on nothing more than a bad-faith complaint from an angry troll. It hasn’t cured its devotion to double standards. And by seeking to punish Phillips when the expressive message of the proposed cake is crystal clear, the Division has only strengthened his First Amendment claim.

In recent months, we’ve seen that trolling and shaming work all too well when the relevant power is a private corporation. CEOs and editors aren’t subject to the First Amendment, and they can censor at will — even if they’re degrading the American culture of free speech with every website wrongly blocked and every dissenter shamefully fired. But until the law changes, government officials can’t empower the outrage mob. They can’t engage in viewpoint discrimination, and if they act with actual animus, they can and should be held personally liable for violating a citizen’s core constitutional rights.

In other words, if plaintiffs have the will and the resources, they can defeat government censors. While I don’t claim to know Jack Phillips well, I know that he won’t back down. I also know that ADF has the resources to fight the long battles. Trolls can’t harass Christians out of their fundamental freedoms. The battle is joined. It may rage for years, but expect Jack to prevail once again.

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I would like to know why SCOTUS does not have the ability to compel via contempt of court? Why do lesser courts have that power? Clearly this is contempt and outright defiance. We saw the same thing in the wake of Heller with DC's onerous restrictions creating a virtual ban.

quote:

Originally posted by jigray3:
I would like to know why SCOTUS does not have the ability to compel via contempt of court? Why do lesser courts have that power? Clearly this is contempt and outright defiance. We saw the same ting in the wake of Heller with DC's onerous restrictions.

Nope. The prior decision was very narrow and this was more or less predicted. Now the issue will be presented on a slightly different question.

Should be an interesting argument, since the blue/pink thing is symbolism, and symbolism is speech. I wonder how the judges reviewing the case will take into account that this was brought by a lawyer (I mean, you can tell, right?) who seems all too obviously intent on creating a controversy to be taken to court. I doubt it'll stop any court from reviewing both sides of the argument. But how badly do judges want to encourage lawyers to prove just how clever they are at cooking up scenarios to manipulate the courts' behavior?

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trolling and shaming work all too well when the relevant power is a private corporation. CEOs and editors aren’t subject to the First Amendment, and they can censor at will

Given the above excerpt - couldn't the cake shop change the way they're structured, on paper at least, and in doing so garner the same "out" that CEOs and Editors are said to have?

Jack Phillips, CEO/Baker/Editor
Masterpiece Cakeshop, Edible Art

or some such...?

Don't be a baker (service) or a seller (retail), be an artist who selectively takes commissions. Who could demand (insert any famous artist) paint a painting of (insert anything the artist doesn't feel like painting)? Or a songwriter? Try suing the Beatles because they won't write a song about (whatever the Beatles would never write a song about).

How would this not solve Phillips' issue, in a practical sense?

Take a look at the description of the cake. A blue exterior and a pink interior.

One way or another some lawyer was going to tailor a phone call just right, no matter how many tries it took.

The ABC News website headline this morning. And to think I once believed everything I read in the papers.

Colorado baker who refused to make cake for gays sues again
By JAMES ANDERSON, ASSOCIATED PRESS
DENVER — Aug 15, 2018, 6:51 PM ET

They will not stop until he closes his doors, which is the goal here.

My wife's 45th is coming up. I may get her a cake from Masterpiece.

This is infuriating to me. I realize there is a greater point here trying to be made by the left, but common sense would dictate that there are plenty of cake makers willing to make their cake with the pink/blue, dildos, satanic messages etc.

It is mind boggling to think any body or court would decide this guy must be compelled to make one of these cakes against his wishes. I don't care about the religious part of it. Don't want to make a cake, shouldn't have to.

It can't be proven, but it's not discrimination, because I think this guy would make a cake for a gay couple, or a transgender person if the cake and the occasion were not celebrating their gayness or transgenderness. In other words, I bet if they kept their mouths shut about their specific traits, and just ordered a birthday cake, he'd make it.

He isn't discriminating against the person, he is choosing not to partake in celebrating something he disagrees with. It'd be different if he said, you are gay so I will not work with you. That is not the case here, I think.