Jack Phillips Case Shows Misunderstanding of Discrimination, Warn Legal Experts

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INGSOC
PREMO Member
There is a clear legal distinction in declining to express a message and refusing to serve a class of people, legal experts said regarding the case of a Colorado baker that declined to design and bake cake for a same-sex wedding.

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“Three other bakeries were asked to design custom cakes that only had a religious message, a verse from the Bible. That verse was critical of same-sex marriage,” Waggoner said. “The Colorado commission said that that message they could decline because it was offensive.”

The Cato Institute supported the Supreme Court’s 2015 ruling recognizing same-sex marriage as a constitutional right. However, the libertarian think tank supports Phillip’s First Amendment rights in this case.

“Creating expressive products is constitutionally different than non-expressive activities like delivering food, renting out ballrooms, or driving limousines,” Ilya Shapiro, senior fellow in constitutional studies at the Cato Institute, said during The Heritage Foundation forum. “We might want, or there might be different kind of defenses for those types of businesses, be they statutorily or constitutional. But they don’t resound in the freedom of speech.”

He said using the government to stamp out dissenting views should cause concern.

“Fundamentally there is a difference between denying a service to certain kinds of people and declining to convey a particular message,” Shapiro added. “I don’t even know why you would want to have as your wedding vendor, someone who can’t in good faith—literally—support your union.”



Jack Phillips Case Shows Misunderstanding of Discrimination, Warn Legal Experts
 
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