Masterpiece Cakeshop involves a baker in Colorado who declined to make a custom wedding cake
for a gay couple for their wedding.
By a 7-2 vote, the Court ruled that because the government agency that was enforcing the
state anti-discrimination law was itself biased, was itself hostile to religion, Mr. Phillips,
who was asserting a religious liberty claim, his rights were violated.
And so the government cannot act from an improper motive when it's trying to apply even a, uh,
a neutral law.
Ultimately, the Supreme Court did not decide any of the big issues in Masterpiece Cakeshop.
Not about the freedom of expression and how that coheres with an anti-discrimination law,
not whether a baker is sufficiently uh, artistic or expressive to get protection under the
free speech clause of the First Amendment.
Instead, the Court found that the state commission, the Colorado Civil Rights Commission
itself displayed anti-religious animus.
It was biased.
It was hostile to Jack Phillips, to the baker, uh, because of certain disparaging comments
uh, that certain commissioners made about his religious views, uh, and also the disparate
treatment uh, that the commission made.
There were a couple of commissioners, uh, who talked about how religion has been used
to justify everything from slavery to the Holocaust, some pretty strong statements.
The commission was treating people differently based on whether they had a religious viewpoint,
and um, it was taking into consideration one of these protected classes, that is, uh, itself
discriminating based on religion.
The ruling, the majority opinion was unusually short, particularly for such a great controversy.
Eighteen pages makes for a very short decision.
I believe Justice Thomas' concurrence, which goes into the free speech uh, aspects is longer.
Justice Kennedy wrote for the majority, uh, joined by six of his colleagues.
Uh, Justice Ginsberg dissented, joined by Justice Sotomayor, and there were several
concurrences.
Justice Kagan, joined by Justice Breyer, those were perhaps the surprising votes in favor
of the baker, but uh, Justice Kagan wrote separately to disagree with Justice Gorsuch
and said that if there had not been this anti-religious bias, the case might have come out a different
way.
What's interesting is that the dissenting justices, Ginsberg and Sotomayor, didn't say
that the baker loses because his First Amendment rights are trumped by the state anti-discrimination law.
What they said actually was that the anti-religious bias was not definitive, was not decisive
to the outcome of this case because Colorado's law can be applied neutrally, even if one
isn't biased against religion.
So that's an, an interesting wrinkle.
It was a narrow ruling in the sense that it only applies to future cases where there are
allegations where the government acted with that same kind of hostility to religion.
There's really no precedent being set for future clashes of state anti-discrimination
laws and the First Amendment.
The implications uh, probably will not be far-reaching.
So on the side supporting the baker, uh, some people have said that this is a big victory
for religious liberty, that the court, by a 7-2 vote won't tolerate, uh, anti-religious
uh, hostility and, and bias, and that's a, a big deal.
We have no clarity, no direction on how you resolve uh, this seeming tension between state
anti-discrimination law and the First Amendment.