Mediaboss Marketing

The new case, Masterpiece Cakeshop v. Colorado Civil Rights Commission, No. 16-111, started in 2012, when the baker, Jack Phillips, an owner of Masterpiece Cakeshop in Lakewood, Colo., refused to create a cake for the wedding reception of David Mullins and Charlie Craig, who were planning to marry in Massachusetts. The couple filed discrimination charges, and they won before a civil rights commission and in the courts.

This has always been about more than a cake, Mr. Mullins said. Businesses should not be allowed to violate the law and discriminate against us because of who we are and who we love.

Mr. Phillips, who calls himself a cake artist, argued that two parts of the First Amendment its protections for free expression and religious freedom overrode a Colorado anti-discrimination law and allowed him to refuse to create a custom wedding cake.

David Cortman, one of Mr. Phillipss lawyers, said the case concerned fundamental rights. Every American should be free to choose which art they will create and which art they wont create without fear of being unjustly punished by the government, he said.

In 2015, a Colorado appeals court ruled against Mr. Phillips. Masterpiece does not convey a message supporting same-sex marriages merely by abiding by the law and serving its customers equally, the court said.

In a Supreme Court brief, Mr. Phillipss lawyers said he is happy to create other items for gay and lesbian clients. But his faith requires him, they said, to use his artistic talents to promote only messages that align with his religious beliefs.

Thus, the brief said, he declines lucrative business by not creating goods that contain alcohol or cakes celebrating Halloween and other messages his faith prohibits, such as racism, atheism, and any marriage not between one man and one woman.

The brief said Mr. Mullins and Mr. Craig could have bought a cake from another baker and in fact easily obtained a free wedding cake with a rainbow design from another bakery.

In response, the couples lawyer wrote that it is no answer to say that Mullins and Craig could shop somewhere else for their wedding cake, just as it was no answer in 1966 to say that African-American customers could eat at another restaurant.

In a second development concerning gay and lesbian couples, the Supreme Court reaffirmed on Monday its 2015 decision recognizing a constitutional right to same-sex marriage, ruling that states may not treat married same-sex couples differently from others in issuing birth certificates.

The majority decision was unsigned. Justice Neil M. Gorsuch, joined by Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel A. Alito Jr., dissented.

The case concerned an Arkansas law about birth certificates that treats married opposite-sex couples differently from same-sex ones. A husband of a married woman is automatically listed as the father even if he is not the genetic parent. Same-sex spouses are not.

The case, Pavan v. Smith, No. 16-992, was brought by two married lesbian couples who had jointly planned their childs conception by means of an anonymous sperm donor. State officials listed the biological mother on the childrens birth certificates and refused to list their partners, saying they were not entitled to a husbands presumption of paternity.

The Arkansas Supreme Court ruled against the women, saying that it does not violate equal protection to acknowledge basic biological truths.

Obergefell v. Hodges, the 2015 United States Supreme Court decision, listed birth certificates among the governmental rights, benefits and responsibilities that typically accompany marriage.

In its unsigned opinion, the majority said on Monday that the Arkansas Supreme Court had erred in failing to apply the 2015 decision to birth certificates. Obergefell proscribes such disparate treatment, the opinion said. As we explained there, a state may not exclude same-sex couples from civil marriage on the same terms and conditions as opposite-sex couples.

Arkansas uses birth certificates, Mondays opinion said, to give married parents a form of legal recognition that is not available to unmarried parents. It continued, Having made that choice, Arkansas may not, consistent with Obergefell, deny married same-sex couples that recognition.

In dissent, Justice Gorsuch said the court had acted rashly in not asking for briefs and argument on the question presented in the case.

To be sure, Obergefell addressed the question whether a state must recognize same-sex marriages, he wrote. But nothing in Obergefell spoke (let alone clearly) to the question addressed by the Arkansas Supreme Court.

The statute in question establishes a set of rules designed to ensure that the biological parents of a child are listed on the childs birth certificate, Justice Gorsuch wrote. Before the state supreme court, the state argued that rational reasons exist for a biology-based birth registration regime, reasons that in no way offend Obergefell like ensuring government officials can identify public health trends and helping individuals determine their biological lineage, citizenship or susceptibility to genetic disorders.

In an opinion that did not in any way seek to defy but rather earnestly engage Obergefell, the state supreme court agreed, Justice Gorsuch wrote. And it is very hard to see what is wrong with this conclusion for, just as the state court recognized, nothing in Obergefell indicates that a birth registration regime based on biology, one no doubt with many analogues across the country and throughout history, offends the Constitution.

Follow Adam Liptak on Twitter @adamliptak

Get politics and Washington news updates via Facebook, Twitter and in the Morning Briefing newsletter.

A version of this article appears in print on June 27, 2017, on Page A1 of the New York edition with the headline: Cake Case Takes Court Back to the Culture Wars.

Read the original post:
Justices to Hear Case on Religious Objections to Same-Sex Marriage - New York Times