U.S. Supreme Court rules in favour of discriminatory anti-gay baker

After a much-publicised legal battle, the U.S. Supreme Court has voted 7-2 in favour of the Colorado baker who refused to make wedding cakes for same-sex couples because of his religious beliefs. Jack Phillips, owner of Masterpiece Cakeshop, told gay couple Charlie Craig and David Millins all the way back in 2012 that he would not bake them a wedding cake. The couple then took the case up with the Colorado Civil Rights Commission, eventually leading to the Supreme Court. Only Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Sonia Sotomayor voted against the baker.

The ruling states: “The laws and the Constitution can, and in some instances must, protect gay persons and gay couples in the exercise of their civil rights, but religious and philosophical objections to gay marriage are protected views and in some instances protected forms of expression.

“Still, the delicate question of when the free exercise of his religion must yield to an otherwise valid exercise of state power needed to be determined in an adjudication in which religious hostility on the part of the State itself would not be a factor in the balance the State sought to reach. That requirement, however, was not met here. When the Colorado Civil Rights Commission considered this case, it did not do so with the religious neutrality that the Constitution requires.

“Given all these considerations, it is proper to hold that whatever the outcome of some future controversy involving facts similar to these, the Commission’s actions here violated the Free Exercise Clause; and its order must be set aside.”

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