• Welcome to OGBoards 10.0, keep in mind that we will be making LOTS of changes to smooth out the experience here and make it as close as possible functionally to the old software, but feel free to drop suggestions or requests in the Tech Support subforum!

Supreme Court to rule on baker refusing to make cake for gay couple


This dude is missing what should be a very obvious point to a law professor -- so he is probably doing it intentionally: any bar that is a private actor can ask someone to leave its premises as long as doing so does not violate the law. As far as I know, NY does not have a public accommodations law that protects individuals from, for instance, being removed from a bar for political speech. The judge of course was only asking the MAGA asshole whether there was a religious/spiritual component to the MAGA hat to see if it was protected (not to mock him, although the idea of it is ridiculous despite the fact most of these guys are Lectros who think Trump is God). Colorado has a public accommodations law that prohibits private companies from refusing service based on sexual orientation, and what the Colorado baker did violated that law.

Of course, we have an activist conservative court that will likely undo decades of precedent on this issue, but they won't be doing it because liberals want to have their cake and eat it too.
 
Turley is a douchebag. It's about public accommodation. If you are open to the public, you serve the public. If the baker wins, then a hotel can deny a room to a same sex couple or even a interracial couple using The Bible as their defense.

Hobby Lobby is up there with the worst SC decisions in the past hundred years. It opens the floodgates for all sorts of discrimination.
 
Turley is a douchebag. It's about public accommodation. If you are open to the public, you serve the public. If the baker wins, then a hotel can deny a room to a same sex couple or even a interracial couple using The Bible as their defense.

Hobby Lobby is up there with the worst SC decisions in the past hundred years. It opens the floodgates for all sorts of discrimination.

That's partially correct RJ. You're right that the USSC could be ruling that legit religious belief is grounds to deny a hotel room to a same sex couple. Although, I actually think that's a better case for the petitioner, since the hotel owner would literally be providing a place for them to sleep together, rather than simply eating cake. But the 13th Amendment prohibits discrimination on the basis of race by private business - that's why states don't need public accommodation laws to protect against racial discrimination, and why they do need them for other types of discrimination, should they wish to provide those protections.

I'm sort of split here. If some nice old Christian grandmother is asked to bake a cake for a Satanic baptism (ignore the fact that the Church of Satan is a parody of Roman Catholicism, nana doesn't know that), I don't think she should have to bake that cake. I'm also generally going to side with freedom to transact business as you wish, under the belief that (1) freedom is good and (2) turning down money and angering a whole community who will then probably protest your business is bad for business, so it works itself out. But by the same reasoning, this baker chooses to bake cakes in a state with a public accommodation law he disagrees with. The baker can (1) not be a baker of wedding cakes or (2) move. There are choices that can be made on both sides, and being an asshole isn't illegal. This is a fascinating case and I'm looking forward to reading the opinion.
 
If they OK his BS, discrimination becomes legal. Of course, HL opened this door.

Would gay cops or police or doctors or emts be allowed not to provide services to the baker saying their religious beliefs say they don't have to?

Would a Muslim grocer be legally OK not to sell to any non-Muslim saying his religion prohibits it?
 
that article makes interesting points distinguishing between freedom of speech and freedom of religion. I could get on board with a ruling that says a business person has the first amendment right to choose not to make expressive statements that the business person disagrees with/finds distasteful/doesn't want on her products. that would be narrower than the hobby lobby decision that granted a "freedom of religion" argument to engage in discriminatory employment conduct based on whatever you say your religion is. I think a useful line can be drawn between protecting the right to express or not express oneself under the First Amendment vs. the right to discriminate against customers based on one's own religious beliefs.

that said i fully expect the SCOTUS to go with some broad ruling saying that if you believe something hard enough it's OK to discriminate against people you don't like.
 
HL so sincerely held those beliefs that they invested in companies that made the pills they refused to pay for in their employees' RX package. How that wasn't allowed to be shown in the case is beyond belief. It goes to the heart of their claim.
 
Any one else read the decision? Very narrow holding based almost entirely on the process by which the Commission reached their decision. Kicks the can on down the road...
 
Exactly...they need to have the balls and integrity to void all "religious freedom acts".
 
They completely punted -- why bother taking the case?

I mean, if you were rooting against the baker I think you can (optimistically) read this opinion as a forecast that the times are changing. Instead of going ahead and deciding the case in favor of the baker with a holding that strengthened the sincere religious belief argument, they basically said that the Commission just didn't give it enough honest, neutral consideration (based on what's included in the opinion, it's a reasonable determination IMHO). I think at least two times the court highlighted the fact that at the time same-sex marriage wasn't legalized in Colorado. To me that intimated that if this exact same case went through the administrative review process in Colorado today, and the Commission gave the sincere religious belief argument a neutral review (even if it was in fact lip service), the Commission could make the determination that his refusal to bake them the cake was prohibited under Colorado law and the SC would probably uphold it. Today you’re talking about a state-sanctioned right (legalized same sex marriage) versus a purported religious objection when you’re weighing the competing constitutional rights. Not sure the religious objection wins out under that analysis in today's world.
 
You may be right -- Kennedy is the swing vote and he wrote the opinion, highlighting that same-sex marriage wasn't legal at the time as you said. I think you get Kennedy, Breyer, Kagan, Sotomayor and Ginsburg v. Roberts, Alito, Gorsuch and Thomas. Problem is if you lose Ginsburg. Could have decided it now.
 
Man, Kennedy goes down a really bad path in comparing this case to the other baker cases where the baker's refused to write anti-gay messages on cakes, and Kagan and Ginsburg nailed him (and Gorsuch, Thomas, Alito - who also tried to make that argument and will again). But if he continues down that moronic path, could be a problem.
 
In HS and college, I must have delivered over 1000 wedding cakes, I can't remember writing on any of them.
 
Back
Top