Colorado Baker Defends Republican Appointed Judges

Better yet, voters should stop electing Democrats at the state and federal levels who appoint judges and commissioners who side with harassers instead of defending First Amendment freedoms. In any case, however, judges should consider treating some of these cases as “frivolous lawsuits,” with appropriate financial sanctions, and perhaps consider professional sanctions against lawyers who pursue particularly egregious claims designed only to torment the defendant.

After 12 years in the news, Phillips’ situation is well known. A devout Christian and traditionalist, Phillips will serve anyone but will not create a message contrary to his beliefs. He was disciplined by the Colorado Civil Rights Commission for refusing to bake a cake to celebrate a same-sex wedding ceremony. He ended up winning a narrow ruling at the U.S. Supreme Court, only to be subject to new lawsuits brought by a transgender person for whom Phillips refused, on separate occasions, to make confections celebrating a gender transition and depicting Satan smoking marijuana.

In this last case arising from the transgender person’s demand, the Colorado Supreme Court dismissed the case, but, unfortunately, only for technical reasons. Rather than accept the logic of the U.S. Supreme Court’s rulings in the earlier case of Phillips et al., which would have meant affirming Phillips’s rights, and the rights of all Coloradans, to freedom of religious conscience, the Colorado court it just decided that the transgender lawsuit had been filed in the wrong way and in the wrong place.

“We express no opinion regarding the (underlying) claims,” the court’s 4-3 majority wrote before quickly resorting to verbiage, showing more sympathy for the plaintiff’s supposed “anti-discrimination” rights than for Phillips’ religious freedom.

In other words, Phillips wins for now, but the author and others remain tacitly encouraged, if they have the resources for more legal battles, to continue badgering Phillips with lawsuits that, one way or another, will almost certainly end up being dismissed by the U.S. Supreme Court. USA – but only after continuing to drag Phillips into legal hell.

That’s exactly what Satan’s and transgender cake requests were: pure harassment rather than serious requests for fancy sweets. As the plaintiff’s lawyer said, the real reason for the lawsuit was to “call (Phillips’) bluff.”

It would help if the U.S. Supreme Court were even more definitive in holding that religious freedom encompasses the expressive rights of business owners who rely on personal creativity. In Phillips’ earlier case, the high court identified blatantly anti-Christian bias on the part of the Colorado Civil Rights Commission but did not fully recognize the freedom underlying Phillips’ First Amendment. In the other important recent case affirming the expressive rights of business owners, 303 Creative LLC v. the court ruled in 2023 based on freedom of expression and not the free exercise of religion.

Still, moral and constitutional imperatives, not to mention the overwhelming bias of Supreme Court jurisprudence, should make it obvious that business owners and their workers deserve robust protection of their religious freedom. If we combine the reasoning in 303 Creative and Confectionery masterpiece with that from 2014 Burwell v. Hobby Lobby case and the 2023 case of Groff v. among others, the conclusion is clear: except in unusual circumstances, people cannot be forced to act or make expressions that violate their faith.

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From the Puritans, Quakers, and Catholics who fled to various New World colonies in the 1600s expressly to escape religious persecution, to James Madison’s amendment to the religious freedom text of the Virginia Declaration of Rights in 1776, to the ratification of the nation of the First Convention drafted by Madison. Amendment to the Constitution in 1791 and until the historic decisions above and that of Little Sisters of the Poor Saints Peter and Paul Home v. Pennsylvania In 2020, “freedom of conscience” regarding faith has always been America’s “first freedom.”

To ensure that judges and government agencies protect this first freedom, citizens must elect people who make choosing the right judges a priority.