“The neutral and respectful consideration to which Phillips was entitled was compromised here,” Justice Anthony M. Kennedy wrote, adding that the commission’s decision that the baker violated the state’s anti-discrimination law must be set aside. But Kennedy acknowledged that the decision was more of a start than a conclusion to the court’s consideration of the rights of those with religious objections to same-sex marriage and the rights of gay people, who “cannot be treated as social outcasts or as inferior in dignity and worth.” Future cases that raise those issues “must be resolved with tolerance, without undue disrespect to sincere religious beliefs, and without subjecting gay persons to indignities when they seek goods and services in an open market,” he wrote.<doc-sep>The Colorado Civil Rights Commission is going after Christian baker Jack Phillips again, although the Masterpiece Cakeshop owner won a resounding 7-2 decision in June before the U.S. Supreme Court. The state commission moved against Phillips after a lawyer asked him to design and bake a custom cake celebrating a gender transition, pink on the inside and blue on the outside. Phillips, who calls himself a cake artist, said the requested cake’s message would violate his religious beliefs. “The state is doubling down on its hostility against my beliefs, even though that’s what the Supreme Court said they couldn’t do,” Phillips said in a prepared statement released by his lawyers. “It seems I’m the only person in the state of Colorado who can’t live out my beliefs.” The religious liberty group Alliance Defending Freedom, which has represented Phillips since he turned down a gay couple’s order six years ago for a cake celebrating their marriage, also represents him in a federal lawsuit filed late Tuesday to challenge the latest state action against him. Shortly after its Supreme Court loss, the state Civil Rights Commission informed Phillips that it found probable cause to believe that Colorado law requires his bakery in Lakewood to create the requested gender-transition cake. “I serve all customers,” Phillips said once again in his formal statement. “I simply decline to create custom cakes that express messages or celebrate events in violation of my deeply held beliefs.” According to Alliance Defending Freedom, a lawyer identified as Autumn Scardina asked Masterpiece Cakeshop to bake the gender-transition cake on June 26, 2017. That was the same day the Supreme Court agreed to hear Masterpiece Cakeshop v. Colorado Civil Rights Commission, the case involving the wedding cake. “We told him we’d sell him anything in the shop, but we could not create that cake because of the message it conveyed,” Phillips said of the lawyer’s request for the pink and blue cake. Justice Anthony Kennedy, in an opinion joined by four conservative justices and two liberal justices, ruled nearly a year later, on June 4, that the Civil Rights Commission showed “hostility” toward Phillips and his faith in deciding he had violated state anti-discrimination law by declining to create the cake marking the same-sex marriage. “It’s clear that the state of Colorado did not get the message from the Supreme Court, since it is still singling out Jack for punishment and showing hostility toward his religious beliefs,” Kristen Waggoner, senior vice president for Alliance Defending Freedom, said in a formal statement. >>> Related: Baker Hopes to Create ‘Without Fear of Punishment From Government’ Scardina, the lawyer who requested the cake celebrating a gender transition, is not a defendant in Phillips’ lawsuit. The baker is suing the state commission’s members in their official capacities, as well as suing its director personally. “In moving ahead on this new complaint, the government is yet again confirming that it applies its law in an arbitrary and unequal way, which the Supreme Court has already said that it cannot do,” Waggoner, who argued Phillips’ case Dec. 5 before the high court, said. “Jack and other creative professionals should not be targeted by the government for living consistently with their religious beliefs,” she said. As a policy, Phillips’ lawyers note, Masterpiece Cakeshop also does not make custom cakes that celebrate Halloween; that center on alcohol or drug abuse or sexual themes; or that convey disparaging messages, including those targeting lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender individuals or others in the LGBT movement. Phillips said: The Bible tells us God created us male and female, and I believe that. A gender-transition cake is not something I’ve ever made, and it’s not an event I could celebrate. There are plenty of messages I won’t convey on a cake. I’ve turned down requests to make anti-American cakes, cakes disparaging the LGBT community, as well as those glorifying drug and alcohol use, mistreatment of women, divorce, and more. In the case Phillips won before the Supreme Court, his lawyers stress, the state of Colorado admitted that cake artists are free to decline to create custom cakes with a “specific design,” including wedding cakes with “a symbol of gay pride,” cakes that contain “pro-gay designs or inscriptions,” or cakes with images opposing same-sex marriage. The state has not found probable cause when other bakers refused to create custom cakes, including those opposing same-sex weddings. “The arbitrary basis on which the commission is applying the law makes it clear that they are simply targeting Jack because they don’t like his religious beliefs,” Waggoner said. “Jack shouldn’t have to fear government hostility when he opens his shop for business each day. We’re asking the court to put a stop to that.” This report has been updated to include the name of the lawyer who requested the “gender transition” cake.<doc-sep>NEW A vastly improved search engine helps you find the latest on companies, business leaders, and news more easily.<doc-sep>DENVER (AP) -- A Colorado baker who refused to make a wedding cake for a gay couple on religious grounds — a stance partially upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court — has sued the state over its opposition to his refusal to bake a cake celebrating a gender transition, his attorneys said Wednesday. Jack Phillips, owner of the Masterpiece Cakeshop in suburban Denver, claimed that Colorado officials are on a "crusade to crush" him and force him into mediation over the gender transition cake because of his religious beliefs, according to a federal lawsuit filed Tuesday. Phillips is seeking to overturn a Colorado Civil Rights Commission ruling that he discriminated against a transgender person by refusing to make a cake celebrating that person's transition from male to female. His lawsuit came after the Supreme Court ruled in June that Colorado's Civil Rights Commission displayed anti-religious bias when it sanctioned Phillips for refusing to make a wedding cake in 2012 for Charlie Craig and Dave Mullins, a same-sex couple. The justices voted 7-2 that the commission violated Phillips' rights under the First Amendment. But the court did not rule on the larger issue of whether businesses can invoke religious objections to refuse service to gays and lesbians. The Alliance Defending Freedom, a conservative Christian nonprofit law firm, represented Phillips in the case and filed the new lawsuit. Phillips operates a small, family-run bakery located in a strip mall in the southwest Denver suburb of Lakewood. He told the state civil rights commission that he can make no more than two to five custom cakes per week, depending on time constraints and consumer demand for the cakes that he sells in his store that are not for special orders. Autumn Scardina, a Denver attorney whose practice includes family, personal injury, insurance and employment law, filed the Colorado complaint — saying that Phillips refused her request for a gender transition cake in 2017. Story continues Cardina said she asked for a cake with a pink interior and a blue exterior and told Phillips it was intended to celebrate her gender transition. She did not state in her complaint whether she asked for the cake to have a message on it. The commission found on June 28 that Scardina was discriminated against because of her transgender status. It ordered both parties to seek a mediated solution. Phillips sued in response, citing his belief that "the status of being male or female ... is given by God, is biologically determined, is not determined by perceptions or feelings, and cannot be chosen or changed," according to his lawsuit. Phillips alleges that Colorado violated his First Amendment right to practice his faith and the 14th Amendment right to equal protection, citing commission rulings upholding other bakers' refusal to make cakes with messages that are offensive to them. "For over six years now, Colorado has been on a crusade to crush Plaintiff Jack Phillips ... because its officials despise what he believes and how he practices his faith," the lawsuit said. "This lawsuit is necessary to stop Colorado's continuing persecution of Phillips." Phillips' lawyers also suggested that Scardina may have targeted Phillips several times after he refused her original request. The lawsuit said he received several anonymous requests to make cakes depicting Satan and Satanic symbols and that he believed she made the requests. Reached by telephone Wednesday, Scardina declined to comment, citing the pending litigation. Her brother, attorney Todd Scardina, is representing her in the case and did not immediately return a phone message seeking comment. Phillips' lawsuit refers to a website for Scardina's practice, Scardina Law. The site states, in part: "We take great pride in taking on employers who discriminate against lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people and serving them their just desserts." The lawsuit said that Phillips has been harassed, received death threats, and that his small shop was vandalized while the wedding cake case wound its way through the judicial system. Phillips' suit names as defendants members of the Colorado Civil Rights Division, including division director Aubrey Elenis; Republican state Attorney General Cynthia Coffman; and Democratic Gov. John Hickenlooper. It seeks a reversal of the commission ruling and at least $100,000 in punitive damages from Elenis. Hickenlooper told reporters he learned about the lawsuit Wednesday and that the state had no vendetta against Phillips. Rebecca Laurie, a spokeswoman for the civil rights commission, declined comment Wednesday, citing pending litigation. Also declining comment was Coffman spokeswoman Annie Skinner. The Masterpiece Cakeshop wedding cake case stirred intense debate about the mission and composition of Colorado's civil rights commission during the 2018 legislative session. Its seven members are appointed by the governor. Lawmakers added a business representative to the commission and, among other things, moved to ensure that no political party has an advantage on the panel.<doc-sep>
The baker whose refusal to make a same-sex wedding cake on religious and artistic grounds went all the way to the Supreme Court has filed a fresh lawsuit against the state of Colorado. This time, he’s claiming the state is waging a “war against him by embarking on another attempt to prosecute him” over renewed allegations of discrimination at the bakery, according to NBC News. In the latest documented incident, transgender woman Autumn Scardina alleges that she called to order a birthday cake from Lakewood, Colorado’s Masterpiece Cakeshop and was welcomed up until she explained that the cake was being ordered to celebrate the anniversary of her transition. “The woman on the phone told me they do not make cakes celebrating gender changes,” Scardina alleged; she filed a discrimination complaint on June 26, 2017. The state agency that received Scardina’s accusations last year ruled in June of this year that there was probable cause that Masterpiece Cakeshop discriminated against Scardina for being transgender. But attorneys representing Masterpiece Cakeshop bakery owner Jack Phillips filed a lawsuit on Tuesday against officials with the state Civil Rights Commission, the attorney general, and governor John Hickenlooper. The lawsuit claims that the recent decision by Colorado’s Civil Rights Division proves the state is “on a crusade to crush” Phillips because government officials “despise what he believes and how he practices his faith.” By filing the lawsuit, Phillips seems to be pushing for a more finite religious freedom protection than what was offered in the June 2018 Supreme Court decision that bares his bakery’s name. In that case, which was ruled 7-2 in the bakery’s owner’s favor, SCOTUS reversed a prior court’s decision that ruled the state’s discrimination protections outweighed the freedoms of religion and artistic expression as guaranteed by the First Amendment. It did not, as many erroneously interpreted, hold that religious freedom trumps discrimination protections more broadly. Instead, the SCOTUS decision was quite narrow and avoided addressing those underlying constitutional questions. Future cases could have major consequences for cases involving claims of discrimination. In the new lawsuit, Phillips claims that during the six years of court hearings that culminated in the SCOTUS decision, he was targeted for his beliefs: On the same day that the Supreme Court announced it would hear Phillips’s case, a Colorado lawyer called his shop and requested a cake designed with a blue exterior and pink interior, which the caller said would visually depict and celebrate a gender transition. Throughout the next year, Phillips received other requests for cakes celebrating Satan, featuring Satanic symbols, depicting sexually explicit materials, and promoting marijuana use. Phillips believes that some of those requests came from the same Colorado lawyer. In a written state filing, Scardina, who is an attorney, outlined what she believes to be a discriminatory act: “I believe that other people who request birthday cakes get to select the color and theme of the cake. I believe that I was not allowed to order a birthday cake because I requested that its color and theme celebrate my transition from male to female.” According Phillips’s new lawsuit, Masterpiece Cakeshop refused to make the cake for Scardina “because it would have celebrated messages contrary to his religious belief that sex — the status of being male or female — is given by God, is biologically determined, is not determined by perceptions or feelings, and cannot be chosen or changed.” Colorado’s “continuing efforts to target Phillips do not just violate the Constitution; they cross the line into bad faith.” In the decision that Phillips is now contesting, the Civil Rights Commission referred to the SCOTUS case in their argument against him: “As asserted by the Supreme Court, ‘It is unexceptional that Colorado law can protect gay persons, just as it can protect other classes of individuals, in acquiring whatever products and services they choose on the same terms and conditions are offered to other members of the public,’” they write. Phillips’s lawyers, in their suit, say “that citing the Masterpiece decision [represents] support for the state’s renewed efforts to harass Phillips.” • Colorado Baker Back in Court After Turning Away Transgender Woman [NBC] • Baker Wins Supreme Court LGBTQ Wedding Cake Case [E] • The Supreme Court’s Same-Sex Wedding Cake Ruling Does Not Dismantle LGBTQ Protections [E] • All Lawsuits Coverage [E] • All Policy Coverage [E]