I see tons of misinformation here. Comparing this to any business refusing to serve gay people. That is
NOT what this ruling was about. Please read the opinion of the court. Mainly two points of contention are addressed:
\1. Are the cakes Phillips makes, considered expressive works protected by the 1st Amendment and he has a right to refuse to make an "expressive message" based on his religion?
- TLDR: In this very specific instance, yes they can be. (Justice Thomas does an excellent job explaining why) This was not just some guy saying "I don't like gays and won't serve them".
\2. Was the Colorado Commission biased and not objective and neutral towards his religion on their forcing of him to make the cake?
- TLDR: Yes (Read Justice Kennedy's "II B")
Key parts in the ruling:
- The case presents difficult questions as to the proper reconciliation of at least two principles. The first is the authority of a State and its governmental entities to protect the rights and dignity of gay persons who are, or wish to be, married but who face discrimination when they seek goods or services. The second is the right of all persons to exercise fundamental freedoms under the First Amend-ment, as applied to the States through the Fourteenth Amendment.
- Still, the delicate question of when the free exercise of his religion must yield to an otherwise valid exercise of state power needed to be determined in an adjudication in which religious hostility on the part of the State itself would not be a factor in thebalance the State sought to reach. That requirement,however, was not met here. When the Colorado Civil Rights Commission considered this case, it did not do so with the religious neutrality that the Constitution requires. Given all these considerations, it is proper to hold that whatever the outcome of some future controversy involving facts similar to these, the Commission’s actions here violated the Free Exercise Clause; and its order must be set aside.
- And there are no doubt innumerable goods and services that no one could argue implicate the First Amendment. Petitioners conceded, moreover, that if a baker refused to sell any goods or any cakes for gay weddings, that would be a different matter and the State would have a strong case under this Court’s precedents that this would be a denial of goods and services that went beyond any protected rights of a baker who offers goods and services to the general public and is subject to a neutrally applied and generally applicable public accommodations law. Phillips claims, however, that a narrower issue is presented. He argues that he had to use his artistic skills to make an expressive statement, a wedding endorsement in his own voice and of his own creation. As Phillips would see the case, this contention has a significant First Amendment speech component and implicates his deep and sincere religious beliefs. In this context the baker likely found it difficult to find a line where the customers’ rights to goods and services became a demand for him to exercise the right of his own personal expression for their message, a message he could not express in a way consistent with his religious beliefs.
- ...there is some force to the argument that the baker was not unreasonable in deeming it lawful to decline to take an action that he understood to be an expression of support for their validity when that expression was contrary to his sincerely held religious beliefs, at least insofar as his refusal was limited to refusing to create and express a message in support of gay marriage, even one planned to take place in another State.
- Forcing Phillips to make custom wedding cakes for same-sex marriages requires him to, at the very least, acknowledge that samesex weddings are “weddings” and suggest that they should be celebrated—the precise message he believes his faith forbids. The First Amendment prohibits Colorado from requiring Phillips to “bear witness to [these] fact,” Hurley, 515 U. S., at 574, or to “affir[m] . . . a belief with which [he] disagrees,” .....The Colorado Court of Appeals was wrong to conclude that Phillips’ conduct was not expressive
- States cannot put individuals to the choice of “be[ing] compelled to affirm someone else’s belief ” or “be[ing] forced to speak when [they] would prefer to remain silent.”
- As Justice Gorsuch explains, the Commission treated Phillips’ case differently from a simiilar case involving three other bakers, for reasons that can only be explained by hostility toward Phillips’ religion.
It was mainly about two things here,
how the state selectively attacked the Baker's specific religion in their application of the law, and how a
wedding cake can extend into protections of the first amendment as it constitutes art. The Baker was not refusing to sell any cake to the couple, just refusing to make a custom one specifically for a gay wedding that went against his religious beliefs.
I suggest you all read the " II B" section of the Opinion of the Court as well. Pretty blatant that the state was not objective and neutral in their application of the law
- To describe a man’s faith as “one of the most despicable pieces of rhetoric that people can use” is to disparage his religion in at least two distinct ways: by describing it as despicable, and also by characterizing it as merely rhetorical—something insubstantial and even insincere. The commissioner even went so far as to compare Phillips’ invocation of his sincerely held religious beliefs to defense of slavery and the Holocaust. This sentiment is inappropriate for a Commission charged with the solemn responsibility of fair and neutral enforcement of Colorado’s anti-discrimination law—a law that protects discrimination on the basis of religion as well as sexual orientation.
