A New Battle for Masterpiece Cakeshop

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A New Battle for Masterpiece Cakeshop

This post has been updated with a response from Colorado Governor John Hickenlooper. If Jack Phillips had hoped a Supreme Court ruling in his favor would bring an end to his saga, he was sadly mistaken. The owner of Masterpiece Cakeshop is in another legal fight in Colorado, this time over an order for a birthday cake that would also honor a gender transition.

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On June 4, the Supreme Court ruled 7-2 that the Colorado Civil Rights Commission acted with animus when they tried to punish Phillips for refusing to bake a wedding cake for a gay couple, citing his Christian beliefs. The Supreme Court victory was the culmination of a six-year legal battle for Phillips and the Alliance Defending Freedom, a prominent Christian legal group that has won a number of high-profile religious liberty and First Amendment cases before the high court in recent years. 

The Colorado Civil Rights Commission filed a new complaint against Phillips on July 20. The crux of the new charge is that Phillips refused to bake a birthday cake that also celebrated a gender transition. According to a release from the Alliance Defending Freedom: 

 

On June 26, 2017, the same day that the Supreme Court agreed to take up Masterpiece Cakeshop v. Colorado Civil Rights Commission, an attorney asked Phillips to create a cake designed pink on the inside and blue on the outside, which the attorney said was to celebrate a gender transition from male to female. Phillips declined the request because the custom cake would have expressed messages about sex and gender identity that conflict with his religious beliefs. Less than a month after the Supreme Court ruled for Phillips in his first case, the state surprised him by finding probable cause to believe that Colorado law requires him to create the requested gender-transition cake. 

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