Colorado Supreme Court dismisses case on procedural grounds against Christian baker after 12-year legal battle

The latest legal action against the Christian baker who refused to bake a cake celebrating a gender transition has been halted after the Colorado Supreme Court dismissed the lawsuit.

Defendant Jack Phillips said baking the cake for the plaintiff, Autumn Scardina, would violate his Christian convictions.

While ruling for Phillips, the state high court emphasized that it was not weighing in on the baker’s First Amendment rights, but dismissed the case because Scardina had incorrectly filed the lawsuit. “We granted certiorari to determine, among other issues, whether Scardina properly filed her case,” the court explained in its opinion. “We conclude that she did not.”

In the court’s majority opinion, Justice Melissa Hart wrote: “The underlying constitutional question this case raises has become the focus of intense public debate. How should governments balance the rights of transgender individuals to be free from discrimination in places of public accommodation with the rights of religious business owners when they are operating in the public market? We cannot answer that question.” 

This is the second case Phillips has fought on First Amendment grounds. As explained by Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF), the Christian legal group defending Phillips, the latest action against the Christian baker began in 2017 when Scardina asked Phillips’ Masterpiece Cakeshop to create a cake that would symbolize and celebrate a gender transition. Scardina “then called again to request another custom cake, one depicting Satan smoking marijuana, to ‘correct the errors of [Phillips’] thinking,’” ADF explained. 

Phillips declined both of Scardina’s requests “because the cakes express messages that violate his core beliefs,” saidADF. “The attorney then filed the most recent lawsuit, threatening to continue harassing Phillips until he is punished.”  

ADF noted that as a baker, “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.” 

ADF noted that Scardina’s request was made on the day the U.S. Supreme Court agreed to hear a 2012 case brought against Phillips, in which two men asked Phillips to create a cake for a same-sex marriage. As with the latter case, Phillips politely declined on grounds that creating the cake would violate his Christian convictions about marriage. In response the Colorado Civil Rights Commission charged Phillips with violating the state’s anti-discrimination law, “despite the Commission giving a free pass to three different bakers who refused orders from customers opposing same-sex marriage,” noted ADF. 

In 2018 The U.S. Supreme Court decided 7-2 in favor of Phillips, ruling that the Colorado Civil Rights Commission “was wrong to punish Jack for peacefully living out his beliefs in the marketplace,” recalled ADF, which represented Phillips in that case as well. “The Court called out the Commission’s double standard of punishing Jack, but not the three artists who refused messages against same-sex marriage. Holding that the free exercise clause forbids hostility toward religion, it rejected one Commissioner’s claim that believing marriage is between a man and woman is akin to being racist.” 

Commenting on the latest decision by the Colorado Supreme Court, ADF Senior Counsel Jake Warner said, “Enough is enough. Jack has been dragged through courts for over a decade. It’s time to leave him alone. Free speech is for everyone.” 

Citing the U.S. Supreme Court’s landmark decision in 303 Creative, a similar challenge to First Amendment free-speech guarantees, Warner said, “The government cannot force artists to express messages they don’t believe. 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.” 

In an op-ed on the latest ruling, the editorial board of the Wall Street Journal called the Colorado Supreme Court decision a “victory for common sense and civil comity,” adding that the case was bound to lose in the long run. 

“Last year the Supreme Court delivered a more robust ruling in favor of religious liberty for people like Mr. Phillips,” noted the Journal. “In 303 Creative v. Elenis, the Court ruled that the government cannot force creative professionals – in this case, a website designer – to create speech they don’t believe in. 

“Religious intolerance against other faiths has a regrettable and often violent history. But in modern America the dominant intolerance is by secular enforcers against religious believers. The 12-year hounding of Mr. Phillips is a sorry case in point. It threatens no one to let him bake in peace.”