The consensus, with a few dissenters, is that the oral arguments Tuesday portend victory for Jack Phillips, proprietor of Masterpiece Cakes. I’m going to assume that for purposes of this blog.
What worries me now is how he will win. There are a number of options, but I’ll just mention three.
- The Colorado Civil Rights Commission (or whatever they call it) was biased against Phillips and its decision can’t stand. This has the benefit of being true; the bigotry of one commissioner was manifest. But by the time a case gets to the Supreme Court, who wins this particular case is barely relevant; the case now is about principles that are going to govern cases nationwide. The court never would have taken the case if it was only about Jack Phillips and the Colorado commissioners. It would be terrible if the only result of this case was “commissioners shouldn’t utter their bigotries aloud.”
- The Colorado Civil Rights Commission has applied its facially “neutral law of general application” (terms of art) with “an evil eye and uneven hand” (anachronistic terms of art), so the law is unconstitutional as applied to Phillips’ bona fide religious scruples. In other words, he wins under the free exercise of religion clause. This result would be mildly surprising, but the evil eye and uneven hand appear to be there. A provocateur asked another baker for a bible-shaped cake with some of the “clobber passages” inscribed on it. The baker refused. The provocateur filed a discrimination complaint, which he lost, partly because the baker had served other Christians (proving he’s not anti-Christian), though the Commission ignored that Jack Phillips served other homosexuals. (Transcript of Oral Arguments 58-59) This tends de facto to negate “general application,” so a subtle escape route of Employment Division v. Smith opens for Jack Phillips (and presumably for others in Colorado). I’d still hope against this outcome, which would sort of be limited to Colorado, with a cautionary note to other states to enforce their law equally, across-the-board. It’s an invitation to lots more litigation and to set-ups like the Christian provocateur with his clobber passage cake.
- Jack Phillips reasonably believed that Craig and Mullins were seeking one of his custom-designed wedding cakes, and the Colorado Civil Rights Commission denied him discovery from Craig and Mullins to prove that. A wedding cake is primarily a festive, celebrative central ornament in wedding receptions, only secondarily food. An artist or artisan cannot constitutionally be compelled to create fruits of his artistry in celebration of something he chooses not to celebrate for any reason. In other words, he wins under the free speech clause (which protects against compelled artistic expression). This has seemed Phillips best shot since I first learned of the case. It was in the first sentence out of Kristen Waggoner’s mouth on Phillips’ behalf (although she noted that his objection to speaking was religious). One of the little ironies is that free speech has become a powerful protector of dissident Christians who may have weak free exercise cases thanks to our brother, the late Justice Scalia, who took leave of his senses one day and penned Employment Division v. Smith (which turned out to have some escape routes, so it wasn’t as bad as initially feared). The “problem” here is Justices agonizing, some probably insincerely, about “where to draw the line.” That will be the interesting analysis if Phillips wins on free speech/freedom from compelled expression, which I think is the best analysis, but then I’d probably draw the line very, very protectively against compelled speech—maybe further than most of my readers.
Update: I regret rushing this blog, because it made me forget my favorite way Jack could win.
The court could decide that Jack did not refuse service to anyone because of their sexual orientation, but because they wanted him to adorn a same-sex wedding reception (with a custom creation, Jack believed).
Like Option 1, above, this has the virtue of being true. But Colorado equated that with discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation because same-sex marriage is really, really closely correlated to sexual orientation. Thus did it refuse categorically to recognize a vital distinction, thus extending the legislature’s law beyond what it may have intended and setting up this constitutional clash.
There’s some reason to think that may be where pivotal Justice Kennedy is headed.
MR. COLE: … the public accommodations law does not say you must treat everybody; it says you cannot discriminate on the basis of protected categories.
JUSTICE KENNEDY: Well, but this whole concept of identity is a slightly — suppose he says: Look, I have nothing against — against gay people. He says but I just don’t think
they should have a marriage because that’s contrary to my beliefs. It’s not -MR. COLE: Yeah.
JUSTICE KENNEDY: It’s not their identity. It’s what they’re doing.
MR. COLE: Yeah.
JUSTICE KENNEDY: I think it’s – – your identity thing is just too facile.
(Transcript of Oral Arguments 86-87)
I like this possibility because it seems to me that:
- It leaves intact the core protection of persons against discrimination because of their sexual orientation. (I’ve never been convinced that’s more that a vanishingly rare problem in the realm of public accommodations, but if it is a problem, this covers it.)
- It gets to the nub of Jack Phillips’ objection and validates it. Jack’s sincere professions of willingness to serve all people, and history of serving all people, got lost in the politics of this issue, with him getting branded just another Christianist homophobe. That was false and, yes, facile. Jack deserved better.
- It avoids all the parade of horribles and slippery slopes that attend the “what’s artsy enough and what isn’t?” questions. Nobody, artist or not, is discriminating against persons as person if they decline to help provision an event they find objectionable.
Yes, in a few corners of the country, it may be hard for same-sex couples to get vendors for their celebrations, as an amicus argued. But custom cakes, floral arrangements, wedding invitations, photographers and such are “not goods or services like lodging or transportation necessary for full participation in public life,” as Rabbi Dovid Bressman argued in a friend of the court brief.
That gets us back to the heart of this case: the couple’s sense of entitlement. I don’t think that sense commands validation men and women of goodwill.
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I would a thousand times rather have dinner with secular liberals of a certain temperament than with a group of religious conservatives who agreed with me about most things, but who have no sense of humor or irony.
Some succinct standing advice on recurring themes.
Tipsy Teetotaler ن 