Washington D.C., Sep 12, 2017 / 03:04 am (CNA/EWTN News).- A Colorado baker’s fight to maintain his freedom of expression could be the most influential religious freedom decisions of the US Supreme Court in years, as the court considers the case this term.
“There is far more at stake in this case than simply whether Jack Phillips must bake a cake,” the US bishops’ conference and other Catholic groups stated in an amicus brief in Masterpiece Cakeshop v. Colorado Civil Rights Commission. “It is about the freedom to live according to one’s religious beliefs in daily life and, in so doing, advance the common good.”
The Masterpiece Cakeshop case, to be decided by the Supreme Court in the next term, dates back to 2012. In July of that year, Jack Phillips went to work one July day at Masterpiece Cakeshop, his Lakewood, Colo. bakery in the suburbs of Denver.
Phillips had started his business in 1993 as a way to integrate his two loves — baking and art – into his daily work. Philipps named his shop “Masterpiece” because of the artistic focus of his work, but also because of his Christian beliefs. He drew from Christ’s Sermon on the Mount in the Gospel of Matthew, specifically the commands “no man can serve two masters” and “you cannot serve both God and mammon.”
“I didn’t open this so I could make a lot of money,” Phillips said of his business. “I opened it up so that it would be a way that I could create my art, do the baking that I love, and serve the God that I love.” Phillips spoke last Wednesday at the Heritage Foundation at a panel event on his upcoming Supreme Court case.
One day in July of 2012, two men walked in to Masterpiece Cakeshop and began looking at pictures of wedding cakes. Phillips approached them and quickly ascertained that they were planning their own wedding and had wanted him to bake them a cake for their same-sex wedding.
“Right away, I’m thinking ‘how can I tell them politely that I can’t take care of this wedding for them, because I don’t do same-sex weddings’,” he recalled.
Phillips explained to the couple that he could not serve same-sex weddings – to do so would have been a violation of his Christian beliefs. He said has declined to make a number of types of cakes, including cakes for Halloween, bachelor parties, and a divorce, cakes with alcohol in the ingredients, and cakes with atheist messages.
Once they heard they would not be able to buy a cake from Masterpiece, the couple stormed out of the store angrily. During the ensuing hour, Phillips said his store received about a half-dozen threatening phone calls. Days later, he received a death threat where he had to call his sister, who was at the store with her four year-old daughter, and tell her to hide in the back of the store until police arrived on the scene.
The couple, meanwhile, filed a complaint with the Colorado Civil Rights Commission for discrimination.
The commission ordered Phillips to serve same-sex weddings and to undergo anti-discrimination training. In a hearing in 2014, the civil rights commissioner Diann Rice compared his declining to serve same-sex weddings to justifications for the Holocaust and slavery.
“Freedom of religion and religion has been used to justify all kinds of discrimination throughout history, whether it be slavery, whether it be the Holocaust,” Commissioner Rice said.
Alliance Defending Freedom took up Phillips’ case in court. He lost before an administrative judge in 2013, who ruled that the state could determine when his rights to free speech unlawfully infringed upon others’ rights.
Phillips then appealed his case to the state’s human rights commission, which ruled against him. He appealed again to the state’s court of appeals, which also ruled against him. The Colorado Supreme Court did not take up Phillips’ case.
The case was appealed to the Supreme Court. It was re-listed repeatedly throughout the winter and spring of 2017, before the Court finally decided to take the case in June, at the end of its term.
Once the case is decided at the Supreme Court, the ruling is expected to cap one of the most decisive religious freedom cases of this century.
“It has been said, and I think accurately so, that this could be one of the most important First Amendment cases in terms of free speech and the free exercise of religion in a century or more, and it could be a landmark, seismic kind of case of First Amendment jurisprudence,” Rep. Mike Johnson (R-La.) stated at a Thursday press conference at the U.S. Capitol.
As state amendments defining marriage as between one man and one woman were declared unconstitutional by the court in Obergefell v. Hodges in 2013, states have also begun enforcing laws against discrimination on basis of sexual identity. The conscientious refusal of certain business owners, like florists and bakers, to serve same-sex weddings has been ruled unlawful in several states, including Colorado.
In Phillips’ case, he has a right to freedom of expression as an artist, Alliance Defending Freedom has argued, and this right has been recognized as protected by the First Amendment. If the Supreme Court rules in Phillips’ favor in this case, it could have ramifications in other cases where business owners face discrimination lawsuits.
“The Supreme Court has said that things like that [art] are covered under the protection of the First Amendment,” Kristen Waggoner, senior vice president of the U.S. legal division for ADF, stated at the Heritage Foundation panel event.
Throughout the ordeal, Phillips has paid a heavy price for his stand. He has lost 40 percent of his family’s income and more than half his employees, he said.
The initial briefs have been filed with the Supreme Court. Amicus briefs are currently being filed, the opposing briefs will come in October, and the reply of ADF to those briefs the following month. The case will likely be decided late next spring.
ADF has argued in its brief before the Supreme Court that the rulings by the state’s court of appeals and human rights commission that the state can determine which free artistic expression is protected under the First Amendment stands in flagrant opposition to the original meaning of the Constitution.
“But just as the Commission cannot compel Phillips’s art, neither may the government suppress it,” ADF stated.
Instead, the conflict between Phillips’ freedom as an artist and the wishes of his customers should be solved by the citizens themselves, and not by the government, ADF said.
“There is a better way – one that allows the Commission to ensure that businesses do not refuse to serve people simply because of who they are, but protects individuals like Phillips from being forced to create expression about marriage that violates their core convictions,” ADF’s brief stated.
“The path to civility, progress, and freedom does not crush those who hold unpopular views, pushing them from the public square,” ADF said. “It allows free citizens to determine for themselves ‘the ideas and beliefs deserving of expression, consideration, and adherence’.”
The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, along with the Colorado Catholic Conference, the Catholic Medical Association, and other Catholic non-profits have also weighed in on the case, submitting an amici curiae brief on behalf of Masterpiece Cakeshop.
Religious freedom must never mean just the freedom to worship or the freedom to practice one’s religion in private, the brief said. The First Amendment’s Free Exercise Clause “guarantees every individual the right to seek the truth in religious matters and then adhere to that truth through private and public action.”
In an apostolic exhortation on the proclamation of the Gospel, Pope Francis recently insisted that “no one can demand that religion should be relegated to the inner sanctum of personal life, without influence on societal and national life, without concerns for the soundness of civil institutions, without a right to offer an opinion on events affecting society.”
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Another door-stop USCCB document on “Eucharistic coherence” with page after page of pious blather that a 2nd grader preparing for First Communion could summarize in a simple declarative sentence completely misses the point. Biden is a heretic and is already excommunicated latae sententiae. The bishops need to declare Biden’s excommunication formally and publicly and then proceed down the line from there. U.S. Catholics have had enough. Actions, not words, are what is demanded.
Problem is this action would not only apply to Biden. It would apply to millions of Catholics, who might stop coming to church and no longer financially supporting the church. Then the church could face a dilemma. How important is money?
Also this could lead to schism. Do we really want another of these? Maybe some do.
Valid points, but maybe a spiritual housecleaning is necessary at this point. Better to have a smaller, faithful Church than a morally and spiritually corrupted larger body.
At least those “millions of Catholics” will have ceased committing sacrilege by receiving Holy Communion in a state of mortal sin.
John 6:66
Great Expectations. Biden’s expectation [a shameless excerpt from a previous comment] has an imperious tone, solemnly urging the Church to desist from its faithful practice, refusing what’s owed him over a mere trifle, a predisposed approval of the murder of approx 70 million innocents since 1973. The president lives in a world bereft of “rules”, except his own, with license presumptuously due to separation of Church and State. He recently shouted, arms flailing, that he’s made far greater radical change to our Nation than any predecessor. Destructive changes to timeless moral doctrine on life, family, and sexuality. An infant in the womb is in greater danger during his administration than at any time in history. What’s at stake for the Church isn’t political expediency. Nor maintaining order and cohesion. Neither is separation of Church and State at issue. Rather it’s the foundation of a just society in which religious freedom and the right to uphold its values. Values that are the source of that foundation for justice.
“An infant in the womb is in greater danger during his administration than at any time in history.”
Well said.
I think we can have a pretty good idea of the bishops who supported going forward on the document, if we’ve been following this story. Several bishops have come forward, besides Cordileone and others who have been forthright thus far.
“Hope springs eternal . . .”
So are we going to deny communion to those Catholic politicians advocating the death penalty?
While on this path what about those who campaigned for sending US troops to Iraq?
Oh, please. Support for abortion, “gay marriage”, and trans-sexualism is different, in kind and degree, from prudential judgments re: capital punishment and national defense.
Oh, please, the invasion of Iraq had nothing to do with national defence. It was an act of un godly evil, in every respect it was a murderous pursuit! And one can argue that prudential judgements as applied to capitol punishment can also apply to the issue of Abortion. It is my personal position that I am against abortion, full stop. However to what degree or extent, in a democratic republic where there is the separation of church and state, can I insist that an other, who does not share my faith in Jesus, be beholden to a law that may be against the wishes of a voting majority who are non christian?
The answer you seek is no, because as the court of the Pontiff Francis has reluctantly implied by its “eloquent ambiguity,” (to quote one apologist) the death penalty cannot be declared immoral.
This is as compared to abortion, fornication, sodomy, false witness and idolatry, which, among other things, remain mortal sins.
I have no academic qualifications in Ethics unlike Mr Weigel but a quick look at the Wikipedia page on the subject states:
[ In ethics, a “prudential judgment” is one where the circumstances must be weighed to determine the correct action. Generally, it applies to situations where two people could weigh the circumstances differently and ethically come to different conclusions.
For instance, in the theory of just war, the government of a nation must weigh whether the harms they suffer are more than the harms that would be produced by their going to war against another nation that is harming them; the decision whether to go to war is therefore a prudential judgment.]
Mr Weigel, an author and academically qualified ethicist who has written extensively on the subject of Just War Theory was a signatory to the Project For a New American Centurary’s Statement of Principals, accompanied by the political elite of the Bush administration. His support for invasion of Iraq is on record, in effect a Catholic blessing of this act of war: https://www.americamagazine.org/issue/428/article/just-war-case-war
Why is Mr Weigle, a celebrated contributor of articles to CWR not the subject of serious discourse with respect to the sanctity of life?
One could mount an argument that he should be denied communion!
An ordinary and commonplace and “private thing,” says the hollow-suited and sleepwalking occupier of the White House…
When Hannah Arendt interviewed Adolf Eichmann, the captured overseer of Hitler’s “final solution” to the Jews, she found him to be “quite ordinary, commonplace, and something neither demonic nor monstrous” (Eichman in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil, 1964).
Biden has frequently said that he personally opposes abortion but that he “won’t impose his beliefs on anyone else”, or some such blather.
Mr. President – we’re not asking you to do that, we are merely asking you to DEFEND what you say your beliefs are, and there is NO sign that you have any intention to do so.