Supreme Court will settle battle between gay rights and religion in Colorado cake case

The Supreme Court has a new battle to decide between gay rights and religion in a case that started over a same-sex couple’s wedding cake.

The Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) will hear the appeal of a Colorado baker who refused to make a wedding cake for a same-sex couple based on his religious beliefs.

The highest court in the U.S. is faced with the task of balancing the religious rights of the baker against the couple’s right to equal treatment under the law. This case could also impact several similar disputes that have popped up across the United States since same-sex marriage became legal nationwide.

This incident originally happened in 2012, before the legalization of same-sex marriage. This means that while at the time some states had legalized same-sex marriage, in most states it was still illegal.

Charles Craig and David Mullins planned on getting married in Massachusetts, one of the states where same-sex marriage was legal, but wanted a reception in their home state of Colorado. Jack Phillips is the owner of Masterpiece Cakeshop in Lakewood and was charged with violating Colorado’s anti-discrimination law after declining to make a wedding cake for Craig and Mullins, based on his disapproval of same-sex marriage.

The state courts upheld the Colorado state commission’s position that Phillips displayed discriminatory conduct, however, Phillips appealed to the SCOTUS arguing violation of his 1^st Amendment rights to freedom of religion. Phillips’ lawyers have described him as a “cake artist” who will “not create cakes celebrating any marriage that is contrary to his understanding of biblical teaching.”

There is no federal law that prohibits businesses for denying customers based on religious beliefs regarding their sexual orientation, which means that there is no precedent to base the decision of this case on. While 21 states have “public accommodation” laws that prohibit this level of discrimination toward same-sex couples, what the SCOTUS rules on this case will significantly affect all of the other similar cases around the country.

The decision to take on this case reflects a renewed energy among the court’s conservative justices, whose ranks have recently been bolstered by the addition of conservative Justice Neil Gorsuch, to take on these types of cases.

It was two years ago, the justices turned down a similar appeal from a wedding photographer in New Mexico, and on Monday, the court struck down an Arkansas law birth certificates that prevented the adding of both parents’ names in a same-sex union to a birth certificate.

The law called for including only the biological parent, but the court said, in an unsigned opinion, that this rule denied same-sex couples the same rights as opposite-sex couples and was therefore unconstitutional.

In a 6-3 court ruling the conservative Justices Clarence Thomas, Samuel A. Alito Jr. and Neil M. Gorsuch all dissented.