Huge victory for Christian cake baker after more than a decade of LGBTQ harassment in court



A Christian cake baker has finally defeated legal harassment from the LGBTQ+ movement after fighting in court for more than a decade.

Jack Phillips was sued in 2012 for refusing to create a cake for a same-sex couple at his Masterpiece Cakeshop in Colorado and then later sued for refusing to create a cake celebrating a transgender transition. Attorneys for the Alliance Defending Freedom have defended Phillips for 12 years.

'Enough is enough. Jack has been dragged through courts for over a decade. It’s time to leave him alone.'

On Tuesday the Colorado Supreme Court dismissed the second lawsuit after saying that the attorney who filed the lawsuit did not follow the proper process to do so. Phillips won the first lawsuit in 2018 after a court found that officials acted with hostility against his faith.

Neither of the legal victories established Phillips' constitutional right to free speech as a basis for dismissal.

“Enough is enough. Jack has been dragged through courts for over a decade. It’s time to leave him alone,” said Jake Warner, the senior counsel for ADF.

“Free speech is for everyone," he added. "In this case, an attorney demanded that Jack create a custom cake that would celebrate and symbolize a transition from male to female. Because that cake admittedly expresses a message, and because Jack cannot express that message for anyone, the government cannot punish Jack for declining to express it. The First Amendment protects that decision.”

The ADF said that the attorney who sued Phillips had also asked him to decorate a cake with the image of Satan smoking marijuana in an attempt to "correct the errors" of Phillips' thinking.

"Phillips serves people from all backgrounds. Like many artists, he decides to create custom cakes based on what they will express, not who requests them," read a statement from ADF.

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Instead of sidestepping the free speech issue like Kennedy did in Masterpiece, Gorsuch secured a solid win for the First Amendment.
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LGBT activists have been using courts to harass this Christian baker for ten years

Justice delayed is justice denied: Jack Phillips has ‘now been in courts defending his freedom nearly a decade.’

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Jack Phillips' persecution is a chilling emblem of a legal system disfigured by the elevation of unfettered egoism over civility and the common good.

Horowitz: Justices Kavanaugh and Barrett deal crushing blow to religious liberty



James Madison once wrote, "Government is instituted to protect property of every sort" and that "conscience is the most sacred of all property." Yet just before July 4 weekend, the Supreme Court, by denying an appeal in an important religious liberty case, has essentially abrogated both property and conscience rights, as well as the right to use one's own property in accordance with deeply held religious beliefs. So much for self-evident truths, inalienable rights, and the institution of government to secure these rights.

Last Thursday's victory for Arizona against ballot-harvesters was an aberration for conservatives at the high court. On Friday, the Supreme Court denied an appeal from Arlene's Flowers. Arlene's Flowers owner Barronelle Stutzman was forced by the state of Washington to provide floral arrangements for same-sex ceremonies stemming from a denial of service incident in 2013. By denying this appeal after so many years of court battles — despite five allegedly conservative justices without John Roberts — the court has essentially codified "bake the damn cake" and "arrange those flowers" as "the law of the land."

After the Pyrrhic victory in Masterpiece Cakeshop in 2018, most conservatives recognized that the court only ruled with Christian baker Jack Phillips because the state had specifically targeted him and treated him unfairly, but the implication of the opinion was that in most cases the Rainbow Jihad's demands would trump property and conscience rights. However, that opinion was written by Anthony Kennedy. In the ensuing years, Justices Kennedy and Ginsburg — two zealous proponents of rainbow fascism against religious liberty — were replaced with Justices Kavanaugh and Barrett, for whom conservatives bled.

At its core, this was the issue we were supposed to preserve most with the new makeup of the court, and Arlene's Flowers v. Washington State was the perfect vehicle through which to clarify that Masterpiece is a categorical protection for business owners under the First Amendment. As such, for Barrett and Kavanaugh not to join Thomas, Alito, and Gorsuch in taking up the case is as telling as it is unforgivable.

This is the third time this past term that both Kavanaugh and Barrett betrayed conservatives on religious liberty in the context of the Rainbow Jihad agenda. Last month, they declined to join the other three conservatives in ruling that it's categorically unconstitutional for cities to bar adoption agencies from only delivering adopted children to families with a mother and father. They (along with Gorsuch) also refused to join Thomas and Alito in overturning a radical Fourth Circuit opinion forcing school districts to allow boys in girls' bathrooms. Already in May 2020, before Barrett was on the court, only Thomas and Alito wanted to hear a case to overrule a Ninth Circuit ruling declaring it cruel and unusual punishment not to provide a sex offender in prison with access to castration and transgender hormone therapy.

Thus, despite six GOP appointees on the court, we only have two or three justices at any given time who understand the self-evident truths of natural law pertaining to human sexuality and the inalienable rights of conscience, religious liberty, and property. How's that for a Republican Party?

It's quite peculiar that at a time when we are told private businesses can demand that patrons or employees cover their breathing orifices or accept an experimental injection, we are also told a private business must actively service an anathema to the proprietor's religion. Remember, Jack Phillips and Barronelle Stutzman never sought to deny service to gay people; they would have provided them with every service they offer other customers. At the same time, people not wearing masks can be categorically denied any service and conservatives can be completely de-platformed by companies with monopolistic control over vital avenues of information flow.

What we are seeing today with "progressivism" in the court system is the ultimate nightmare of regression on fundamental rights that Calvin Coolidge warned about in his speech marking the 150th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence:

About the Declaration there is a finality that is exceedingly restful. It is often asserted that the world has made a great deal of progress since 1776, that we have had new thoughts and new experiences which have given us a great advance over the people of that day, and that we may therefore very well discard their conclusions for something more modern. But that reasoning can not be applied to this great charter. If all men are created equal, that is final. If they are endowed with inalienable rights, that is final. If governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed, that is final.

No advance, no progress can be made beyond these propositions. If anyone wishes to deny their truth or their soundness, the only direction in which he can proceed historically is not forward, but backward toward the time when there was no equality, no rights of the individual, no rule of the people. Those who wish to proceed in that direction can not lay claim to progress. They are reactionary. Their ideas are not more modern, but more ancient, than those of the Revolutionary fathers.

Those words are truer today than when Coolidge delivered that address in 1926. By "progressing" to add rights to someone else's bodily integrity or someone else's property, we have regressed by repudiating the authentic rights of man. Property and conscience are as fundamental as inalienable rights come. As Justice Joseph Story said, "The rights of conscience are, indeed, beyond the just reach of any human power. They are given by God, and cannot be encroached upon by human authority."

Is it too much to ask that Republicans actually find judges who understand the Declaration of Independence and don't join the progressives in their most regressive ideas?

The Court-Sanctioned Persecution Of Jack Phillips Shows How ‘Hate Crime’ Laws End Everyone’s Freedom Of Speech

The goal of lawfare against people like Phillips is to destroy free speech, not by winning discrete battles, but by winning a war of attrition.

Thanks To Supreme Court Cowardice, The Government Is Still Persecuting Jack Phillips For Being A Christian

Jack Phillips is not being persecuted for discrimination against LGBT people, but for religious beliefs and practices the Colorado Civil Rights Commission deems in need of correction.

Judge fines Masterpiece Cakeshop for refusing to make a cake celebrating a transgender woman’s transition



The Colorado Christian baker who was famously sued over his refusal to make a custom cake celebrating a same-sex couple's wedding has now been fined by a Colorado court for refusing to make a cake celebrating transgenderism.

Masterpiece Cakeshop owner Jack Phillips was ordered to pay a $500 fine by Denver District Judge A. Bruce Jones on Tuesday for violating anti-discrimination laws by denying a transgender activist attorney's request that he make a cake celebrating their gender transition.

The request in question was made June 26, 2017, by a local attorney named Autumn Scardina, who asked Phillips to make a custom cake with a blue exterior and pink interior to celebrate and reflect a transition from male to female.

Phillips, who notched a pyrrhic victory at the Supreme Court in 2018 over his refusal to make a wedding cake for a same-sex couple, used essentially the same argument in his denial of Scardina: that as a devout Christian, he cannot "create custom cakes that express messages or celebrate events in conflict with his religious beliefs."

During court proceedings, Phillips' lawyers explained that he "believes as a matter of religious conviction 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."

After Scardina's initial lawsuit, which was pursued through the Colorado Civil Rights Commission, failed, the attorney filed another lawsuit, this time taking the complaint to the state court. That avenue has proven fruitful for Scardina's cause.

In the decision, Judge Jones wrote, "Anti-discrimination laws are intended to ensure that members of our society who have historically been treated unfairly, who have been deprived of even the every-day right to access businesses to buy products, are no longer treated as 'others.'"

In response to the ruling, the Alliance Defending Freedom, the firm representing Phillips, wrote that Scardina's most recent lawsuit "could bring financial ruin on Jack and his business," and vowed to appeal the district court's ruling.

"Radical activists and government officials are targeting artists like Jack because they won't promote messages on marriage and sexuality that violate their core convictions," ADF general counsel Kristen Waggoner said in a statement. "We will appeal this decision and continue to defend the freedom of all Americans to peacefully live and work according to their deeply held beliefs without fear of punishment."

She added that the case "represents a disturbing trend: the weaponization of our justice system to ruin those with whom the activists disagree."

Horowitz: With attack on Colorado baker by transgender lobby, red states can take action



Here we go again. It appears that Jack Phillips of Masterpiece Cakeshop in Colorado is the only baker in the entire country. He was the go-to Christian baker for gay wedding ceremonies, and now he might be forced to bake a transgender "transition" cake (yep, there's a cake for everything). Once again, in a world where the entire business universe can discriminate against and censor conservatives, the left gets to have their cake and eat it too.

The plaintiff in the new trial that began on Monday, a man who now goes by the name Autumn Scardina, admits to purposely targeting Phillips after the Supreme Court took up his original case, just as a matter of "calling someone's bluff." In other words, this was not about a burning desire to eat a cake that was blue on the outside and pink on the inside.

Some might be wondering why this litigation can even get off the ground. Didn't the Supreme Court side with Phillips in the original case? Well, as I noted at the time, the supposedly conservative court actually invited further lawsuits and only gave Jack Phillips a very narrow win based on the unique circumstances of the Colorado Civil Rights Commission's unfair targeting of him in that case.

On June 4, 2018, the high court ruled 7-2 that the Colorado Civil Rights Commission singled out Jack Phillips and engaged in overt religious discrimination in its ruling against him. However, the court did not rule that a state can force an individual to craft messages that violate his First Amendment rights. Justice Kennedy, writing for the majority, affirmed his previous view that there is "authority of a State and its governmental entities to protect the rights and dignity of gay persons who are, or wish to be, married."

The ACLU was correct at the time when it predicted that this was just a Pyrrhic victory for religious liberty and that, in fact, the court "reaffirmed the core principle" that, generally, speaking, businesses must serve everyone and every event for any reason.

We live in surreal times, when our political and legal culture have the First Amendment and anti-discrimination law turned on their heads. On the one hand, they suggest that a person cannot refuse service for a particular message that violates his conscience when the customer can obtain that service easily almost anywhere else. Yet, at the same time, they believe that the entire corporate world can collude with each other and government to deny conservatives the ability to obtain any service that essentially allows them to engage in effective speech or commerce.

Likewise, they believe all stores can deny all service to any individual who doesn't take the draconian step of covering his mouth and nose, yet a single store can't deny service for a particular message directly targeting the merchant's own religious beliefs.

Which is why, if conservatives really want to put an end to this, they should not only try to get a new case in front of the presumed more conservative Supreme Court, but actually fight back in the red states. All red states should pass legislation protecting individuals, institutions, and businesses from being forced to service ideas, speech, or events that violate their religious convictions. A group of 20 or so states with strong majorities in the legislatures should work together to do this all at once so that the left's cancel culture cannot effectively target and isolate one individual state.

What the saga with South Dakota's female sports bill teaches us is that Republicans in red states are terrified of cancel culture, which is certainly the strongest on the side of the Rainbow Jihad. As such, each state needs to pass a bill similar to what Mississippi passed several years ago – but they should do so all at once. What this will do is not only prevent the states from being isolated, but also create a circuit split in the courts. It would be most prudent to promote a bill like this in the Dakotas, Iowa, Arkansas, and Missouri so that it would tee up the case for the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals, the most conservative in the country.

This in turn would force the Supreme Court to take up the case. While we've learned never to take the "conservative" justices for granted, with the new orientation of the court, it is likely we have at least five votes.

Finally, conservatives will have to confront the entire concept of judicial supremacy head-on. The same courts that see no problem with states violating natural law with COVID fascism or changing election law during elections will interfere with anything and everything red states do to keep their economies, culture, and liberties functioning. The only reason we don't have more court interference is because Republican legislatures rarely do anything righteous with their strong majorities.

If conservatives ever hope to make red states distinguishable from blue states, they will have to give the courts the same treatment the blue states do and show them the power of the other branches of government.
wwing via Getty Images

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