Supreme Court gay wedding cake case: Philly-area officials say ruling won't change how businesses operate here

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The Supreme Court ruled on Monday in favor of a Colorado baker who refused to make a cake for a same-sex couple because gay marriage was against his religious beliefs.

In a 7-2 vote, the court ruled that the Colorado Civil Rights Commission had shown hostility toward the baker’s beliefs and, as one justice wrote, failed to offer a “neutral and respectful consideration of his claims.”

Rutgers-Camden law professor Perry Dane, a former clerk to U.S. Supreme Court Justice William Brennan, said the ruling doesn’t give businesses the right to discriminate against LGBT people (back in December, Dane highlighted the possibility the court would take this view).

The American Civil Liberties Union also stressed that point in a tweet.

“It doesn’t say that at all,” Dane said. As he explained, “it’s saying the religious claims have to have a fair hearing, and to my mind that’s actually a very important thing to say.”

New Jersey and 20 other states prohibit businesses from denying service due to a person’s sexual orientation and gender identity. While Pennsylvania does not prohibit that, Philadelphia does. The city’s Commission on Human Relations has the power to temporarily shut down businesses that repeatedly violate the law.

“Let me be clear, today’s Supreme Court ruling does not change the way businesses must operate in Philadelphia,” said Rue Landau, the commission’s executive director, in a statement. “Places open to the public cannot turn away anyone because of their sexual orientation, gender identity, race, ethnicity, religion, disability, or any other protected category.”

>> Read more: Religious baker who refused to make a wedding cake for gay couple deserves protection whether you agree with him or not | Opinion

New Jersey Attorney General Gurbir S. Grewal also said the ruling would not change protections for LGBT people.

“New Jersey has some of the strongest anti-LGBT discrimination laws in the country, and we are committed to vigorously enforcing those laws,” Grewal said in a statement. “Nothing about today’s decision changes any of that.”

Philadelphia’s LGBT affairs director, Amber Hikes, weighed in on the ruling on Twitter.

The cakeshop case goes back to 2012, when Dave Mullins and Charlie Craig stopped in the Lakewood, Colo., shop of Christian baker Jack Phillips. In a brief exchange, Phillips said he could sell the couple other goods, but not a wedding cake, because same-sex marriage ran against his religious beliefs. The couple filed a complaint with the Colorado Civil Rights Commission, which sided with them.

<span class="icon icon--xs icon__camera"> </span> <span class="credit font--s-m upper black"> <b>(Olivier Douliery/Abaca Press/TNS)</b> </span> <div class="caption space-half--right font--s-m gray--med db"> Dave Mullins and Charlie Craig stand in front of supporters outside the Supreme Court building in December. </div>
(Olivier Douliery/Abaca Press/TNS)
Dave Mullins and Charlie Craig stand in front of supporters outside the Supreme Court building in December.

In Monday’s ruling, Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote that the commission’s actions “showed elements of a clear and impermissible hostility toward the sincere religious beliefs motivating his objection.” Kennedy cited comments from some of the commission’s members who “disparaged Phillips’ faith as despicable and characterized it as merely rhetorical, and compared his invocation of his sincerely held religious beliefs to defenses of slavery and the Holocaust.”

Like Mullins and Craig, Kennedy wrote, Phillips was also entitled to a “to a neutral and respectful consideration of his claims.”

 

>> Read more: More than gay wedding cake: Why Supreme Court case is about dignity, not dessert | Opinion

 

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