The Alliance Defending Freedom has asked the Colorado Supreme Court to find in favor of a Christian baker who refused to make “a custom-designed cake, pink on the inside and blue on the outside, to reflect and celebrate a gender transition.”
The dispute before the Colorado Supreme Court is whether the state can, under the guise of combatting discrimination, compel the baker to create custom artistic messages with which he disagrees. Legal Insurrection has extensively covered this dispute, which recently saw the baker lose an appeal over his refusal to bake the gender transition celebration cake.
The bakery, Masterpiece Cakeshop, has been embroiled in a decade-long dispute with Colorado officials who accuse baker Jack Phillips of violating the state’s anti-discrimination law by refusing to make custom cakes celebrating LGBT activity.
Phillips declines to make these cakes because of his Christian faith.
In a supplemental filing, the ADF cited its recent victory in 303 Creative LLC v. Elenis, where the U.S. Supreme Court held Colorado could not force a Christian web designer “to create expressive designs speaking messages with which the designer disagrees.”
Phillips petitioned the Colorado Supreme Court to take up his case before the U.S. Supreme Court decided 303 Creative. That decision, which Legal Insurrection covered, dealt with the same law Colorado seeks to apply against Phillips.
The filing argues 303 Creative applies to Phillips because he is “engaged in ‘nearly identical conduct’ to petitioners in 303 Creative.”
Phillips’ legal troubles began in 2012 when a gay couple asked him to create a custom wedding cake for their upcoming nuptials. Phillips, citing his Christian beliefs, refused the request, and Colorado began civil rights proceedings against him.
The U.S. Supreme Court later took up Phillips’ case, ruling 7–2 in his favor but on narrow grounds that did not address the fundamental issue of whether Colorado could compel Phillips’ speech.
The U.S. Supreme Court instead ruled in Phillips’ favor because it found Colorado officials had displayed animus toward his religious beliefs. This left unresolved the free speech issue, which the U.S. Supreme Court finally addressed in 303 Creative.
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