In 2012, Jack Phillips, owner of Masterpiece Cake Shop in Colorado declined to bake a custom wedding cake for a same-sex couple and was censured by the Colorado Civil Rights Commission for discrimination. 

After a number of legal proceedings, the U.S. Supreme Court eventually ruled that the Commission acted with “hostility” to Phillips’ “religious viewpoint.”  

However, on the very same day that the U.S. Supreme Court agreed to hear the case, a transgender attorney, Autumn Scardina, called Phillips to ask him to create a cake with a pink interior and a blue exterior to reflect the attorney’s “transition from male-to-female.” 

After Phillips refused, Scardina sued,  the Colorado courts  once  again found Phillips  liable for discrimination.   

In Texas this week, state Attorney General Ken Paxton filed a multistate brief in the Colorado Supreme Court to defend Phillips.

 Paxton joined other states’ AGs after they learned how Phillips was wrongfully brought to court again for allegedly violating Colorado’s anti-discrimination law. Phillips, a Christian, has now spent the past decade defending his First Amendment rights.  

“I am profoundly disheartened by the targeted harassment experienced by baker Jack Phillips on the basis of his religion,” said Attorney General Paxton. “His victimization is  emblematic of a growing, un-American attempt to impose ideological conformity on our citizens.”

“The Constitution protects us from coerced speech and expression,” Paxton noted. “Courts deciding otherwise risk plunging our nation into totalitarianism.” 

The Arkansas-led amicus brief highlights the importance of states stepping up to defend the religious freedoms of all Americans:

“The Amici States have an important interest in ensuring that people are not denied equal access to publicly available goods and services. But they are also interested in ensuring that persons providing such goods and services are not compelled to speak. Indeed, our federal Constitution protects the providers of goods and services—like anyone else—from being required to express a particular viewpoint. The Amici States seek to ensure that antidiscrimination policy does not trump that constitutionally protected right.” 

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CLICK: PARK LANE by Rebecca Taylor

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