In major Supreme Court case, Justice Dept. sides with baker who refused to make wedding cake for gay

In a major upcoming Supreme Court case that weighs equal rights with religious liberty, the Trump administration on Thursday sided with a Colorado baker who refused to bake a wedding cake for a same-sex couple.

The Department of Justice on Thursday filed a brief on behalf of baker Jack Phillips, who was found to have violated the Colorado Anti-Discrimination Act by refusing to created a cake to celebrate the marriage of Charlie Craig and David Mullins in 2012. Phillips said he doesn’t create wedding cakes for same-sex couples because it would violate his religious beliefs.

The government agreed with Phillips that his cakes are a form of expression, and he cannot be compelled to use his talents for something in which he does not believe.

“Forcing Phillips to create expression for and participate in a ceremony that violates his sincerely held religious beliefs invades his First Amendment rights,” Acting Solicitor General Jeffrey B. Wall wrote in the brief.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/poli...b822a46da5b_story.html?utm_term=.8b19055627e6

Good on the Trump administration. I think this will result in another 1st amendment victory.

Gays will just have to find someone else to bake their cakes.

 

I suppose when Muslims take over our food industry that will be the end of pork barbecue.

 

Oh jesus, couldn't they have just gone to the bakery section in a supermarket and picked out a pre-made wedding cake?

This has nothing to do with the couple not getting the cake they want. And I bet the baker would have baked the cake if it had just been one person coming in saying they wanted a wedding cake.

 

I side with the bakers on this issue but I am more troubled by the other thing cited in the OP article that the DOJ opposes employment protections for gays which is a more fundamental issue than a freaking wedding cake with far greater implications.

 

I'm generally pro gay rights, but this decision will have some major implications. It's hard to feel bad for them though, since this whole thing stemmed from a gay couple that just couldn't accept no for an answer.

 

Im pro gay rights. But more so pro rights.

 

"The government agreed with Phillips that his cakes are a form of expression, and he cannot be compelled to use his talents for something in which he does not believe."

The extent of the commercial intent of the baker may well overwhelm the content of expression argument.

 

or a new market for pork cookers to get into.

 

His attorney/s, had best try to pound that into the Supreme Courts thick skulls. That's all they've got.

The energy that is spent by the DOJ inserting themselves into high profile civil rights issues IE gay rights at least twice now directly has to be unprecedented?

I personally side with the baker not because I approve or understand his homophobia but because I don't. To me as a business owner I would just take their money like anyone else's. However I don't have to understand or approve the bakers decision. In my opinion It's his right to refuse business to anyone he chooses. For any reason or no reason. It's his business.

That may not be legally binding but it's my opinion.

Jeff Sessions may not like the result of this brief being filed with the Supreme Court. They do not like politics attempting to influence them one bit. They will shoot the DOJ the finger in a New York second. It could backfire. Stupid of them. I'm not a fan of stupid.

 

I agree.
poor business decisions aren't unconstitutional.

 

Let us remember that it was this same Supreme Court who enabled the ACA to become law. It's far too late for them to declare themselves removed from the political realm. No, they simply wish to rule over that realm. As Thomas Jefferson feared, and rightly noted. The Court was a creation that was ill-advised.

 

I suppose I will support a bbq stand which would thrive if no other bbq was available.

 

Didn't this guy get fined and lose his business? So does he get his money back?

I am very happy that the SC made this decision. If not, I would hope the West Baptist people would start going to any homosexually owned stores and have products made for them.

It is only fair right?

But now this ruling makes it so we hopefully don't have to see bullying on either side

 

There is little doubt, IMO, that the same court that imposed gay marriage upon all states, will also impose gay wedding cakes upon all cake makers. As I always like to say, a tree is known by the fruit it bears, and this court bears gay activism, not constitutional restraint.

 

It's not quite the same court. How will Gorsuch vote?

 

If anyone can make me restore faith in the Court's original intentions, its Gorsuch. He's a true Judge who believes in impartiality and the rule of law. If we had 5 Gorsuch's, the Court would be in a good place.

 

I miss Scalia. A brilliant mind.

 

They, actually can be if SCOTUS rules such.

 

Ah Thomas was a wise man but ah no Supreme Court? An entity composed of a select number of individuals that yes do interpret the Constitution differently depending make up but at least is a check and balance to perennial twit Congress's law making half of whom I'm certain never have even read the constitution let alone value it,..... and never ending corrupt Presidential appointees just running slap da hell amok.

So yes it was damn well advised to have made the SC.. Opinions not liking their decisions based upon political bias and personal narratives is the cross they bear quite well I think.

 

That's right.

DEMOCRAT PARTY SMEARS NEIL GORSUCH AS A BIGOT


.
The Supreme Court is not currently in session and issuing opinions, so what is the Democratic Party was talking about?

Yesterday the Court issued a brief order in Abbott v. Perez, a case involving Texas redistricting. This is the entire thing:

The application for stay presented to Justice Alito and by him referred to the Court is granted, and it is ordered that the order of the United States District Court for the Western District of Texas, case No. SA-11-CV-360, entered August 24, 2017, is stayed pending the timely filing and disposition of an appeal to this Court.

From this the Democrats spun their fake news lies. The Court did not “give racial gerrymandering the green light,” or “allow racial gerrymandering in Texas,” or “destroy our right to vote,” or “rule that racially gerrymandered districts in Texas were constitutional,” or issue a “blatant endorsement of voter suppression,” or make a “disgusting attack on our voting rights.”

This order does nothing more than preserve the status quo until an appeal can be heard on the merits. Their hysterical claim that “We need laws that protect voting rights from bigots like Trump and Gorsuch” is a complete fabrication.

The New York Times joins the fake news act:

The Supreme Court on Tuesday blocked rulings from a federal court in Texas that had called for revisions to congressional and state legislative districts in the state after the court found that the districts violated the Constitution and the Voting Rights Act.

The Court didn’t “block” the district court’s order, it stayed the order to preserve the status quo until the State’s appeal can be heard, as is common.

Further, the Texas court itself had for the most part endorsed the maps in 2012, after the Supreme Court rejected earlier ones and told the court to try again. The 2012 maps, the panel later said, had been considered in haste in advance of pending elections. In 2013, the Texas Legislature decided not to draw new maps and instead mostly adopted the one drawn by the court in San Antonio.

So the San Antonio court ruled that the district map that it had itself approved, and mostly drew, were unconstitutional.

The State’s appeal brief highlighted the bizarreness of the Democrats’ position:

“The same map the three-judge court thought sufficient to comply with the Constitution and” the Voting Rights Act “when adopted by the court as a remedial map has now been declared unconstitutional when subsequently enacted into law by the branch of government responsible for redistricting under our Constitution,” state officials wrote in their application concerning the congressional districts. “That is both remarkable and unprecedented.”

“If repealing a purportedly discriminatory law in its entirety and replacing it with a law that has received the imprimatur of a federal court does not suffice to remove any lingering ‘taint’” from the 2011 maps, the brief said,“then it is difficult to imagine what could.”

The brazen hate speech that the Democrat Party freely resorts to is utterly beyond the pale. The leaders of the Democrat Party desperately fling wild charges against people like Neil Gorsuch, that are not just lies, but crazy lies.

They have completely lost their minds.

Sad!

 

You can lamet SCOTUS, but Thomas isn't dead.

COTUS is punk rock.

 

Not the purpose or actual role of SCOTUS.

 

More a practical mind I'd say, but missed, yes. Balance.

 

The problem with this is now is it is giving Catholics, Christians and Muslim bakers authority to use a cult against doing business. I hate it when people who think homosexuality is a sin try pushing that belief onto others. No better than Muslims pushing their radical ideology of suicide bombers.

 

It's all kind of sad.

For 2,000 years, Religious people killed gay people, they imprisoned gay people, they chemically castrated gay people - and when that became unacceptable, they fired gay people from their jobs, they kicked them out of housing, and they disrespected gay people's military service.

Now one gay couple asks for a cake and all hell breaks loose in the religious community - the audacity of a gay couple to want
a cake.

Jesus F. Christo. Give them the f**king cake.