The Supreme Court on Monday ruled in favor of a Colorado baker who refused to bake a cake for a same-sex couple’s wedding reception in a case that sat at the intersection of gay rights and religious freedom.
In the wake of the court’s 7-2 decision, advocates of religious freedom are cheering, while supporters of gay rights say the Supreme Court’s ruling has reaffirmed the principle that business owners cannot discriminate based on sexual orientation.
Despite the praise from both sides of the debate, the issue of whether businesses can deny services to gay and lesbian customers because of religious objections still remains unresolved by the Supreme Court’s ruling.
“It’s a ticket good for this ride only,” Dale Carpenter, a professor at the Southern Methodist University Dedman School of Law, said during a conference call Monday.
Calling the decision a “minimalist opinion,” Carpenter said the court “avoided what everybody thought was the major showdown here” between the rights of business owners to object to providing goods and services under the First Amendment and the rights of gay couples to be free from discrimination.
In the majority opinion, Justice Anthony Kennedy focused narrowly on the behavior of the Colorado Civil Rights Commission, whose actions violated baker Jack Phillips’ rights under the First Amendment, the court said. The commission, Kennedy wrote, was hostile toward Phillips’ sincerely held religious beliefs and failed to act as a neutral arbiter when considering his religious objections to baking the cake for Charlie Craig and Dave Mullins, the gay couple who asked Phillips in 2012 to make a cake for their wedding reception.
But Kennedy, who authored the 2015 decision legalizing gay marriage, also acknowledged future cases raising the question of how to balance gay rights with religious freedom, which could result in different decisions from the lower courts.
“The outcome of cases like this in other circumstances must await further elaboration in the courts, all in the context of recognizing that these disputes must be resolved with tolerance, without undue burden disrespect to sincere religious beliefs, and without subjecting gay persons to indignities when they seek goods and services in an open market,” Kennedy wrote.
Already lined up in the lower courts are cases involving business owners who have cited their religious beliefs and free speech rights when refusing to provide services to same-sex couples.
One such case currently has a pending petition before the Supreme Court.
During their conference on Thursday, the justices are scheduled to discuss a case involving a Washington florist who declined to make a floral arrangement for a same-sex wedding because of her religious beliefs.
Legal experts agree the court left open the question of whether business owners can refuse services to gay and lesbian customers due to religious objections.
“When you read the opinion, you see the court leaves open pretty much every option,” Kim Colby, director of the Christian Legal Society’s Center for Law and Religious Freedom, said during a conference call Monday. “The next person who brings a case or the cases below involving compelled speech still have a very viable claim. Other free-exercise types of claims are also viable.”
Colby called the decision “narrow,” but said it is “absolutely an essential win for religious freedom.”
But James Esseks, director of the ACLU’s LGBT & HIV Project, said the high court’s decision doesn’t mean the Colorado bakery can refuse to provide services to gay couples in the future.
“If a new same-sex couple walks into that business, I see no reason in this opinion that Masterpiece Cakeshop is free to turn them away,” he told reporters during a conference call. “They asked for that and they didn’t get that right.”
Craig and Mullins, the couple involved in the case, also indicated after the Supreme Court’s ruling that there is still work to be done regarding similar cases involving business owners who, citing religious objections, deny services to lesbian and gay customers.
“Today’s decision means our fight against discrimination and unfair treatment will continue,” they said in a statement. “We have always believed that in America, you should not be turned away from a business open to the public because of who you are. We brought this case because no one should have to face the shame, embarrassment, and humiliation of being told ‘we don’t serve your kind here’ that we faced, and we will continue fighting until no one does.”
