ICC Note: On Monday, the United States Supreme Court voted 7-2 in favor of a Colorado baker who declined to bake a wedding cake for a same-sex couple due to his religious beliefs. This case, which originated in 2012, has been the source of great debate in recent years, partially due to its potential to set a major precedent for similar cases in the future.

06/04/2018 United States (Christian News Network) – While not completely solving the issue at large, the U.S. Supreme Court has ruled in favor of a Colorado baker who was at the center of a case involving his right to decline to decorate cakes for events such as same-sex celebrations when doing so would violate his religious convictions, finding that he was wrongfully subjected to hostility by the Colorado Civil Rights Commission because of his faith.

Justice Anthony Kennedy, appointed to the bench by then-President Ronald Reagan, wrote the majority opinion, concluding that the Commission was “neither tolerant nor respectful of [the baker’s] religious beliefs.”

“As the record shows, some of the commissioners at the Commission’s formal, public hearings endorsed the view that religious beliefs cannot legitimately be carried into the public sphere or commercial domain, disparaged Phillips’ faith as despicable and characterized it as merely rhetorical, and compared his invocation of his sincerely held religious beliefs to defenses of slavery and the Holocaust,” he wrote.

“The Commission’s hostility was inconsistent with the First Amendment’s guarantee that our laws be applied in a manner that is neutral toward religion. Phillips was entitled to a neutral decisionmaker who would give full and fair consideration to his religious objection as he sought to assert it in all of the circumstances in which this case was presented, considered, and decided,” Kennedy outlined.

He, however, did not go further into the merits of the case—the specifics as to the rights of business owners, but said that the issue would need to play out as time passes. Kennedy suggested that the courts need to strike a balance between religious conviction and the rights of those who identify as homosexual, not infringing upon either.

…

[Full Story]

For interviews, please contact Olivia Miller, Communications Coordinator: [email protected]