The only thing I like about June is helping with VBS at church and reviewing SCOTUS rulings.
Mixed news today: "BREAKING: U.S. Supreme Court rules in favor of Colorado baker who refused to make wedding cake for gay couple for religious reasons."
While the vote was not close (7-2), the ruling was pretty narrow. SCOTUS ruled, ironically, that the CO civil rights commission violated the rights of the baker. However, the SCOTUS did not rule on the issue of the Baker's free speech or religious rights.
The ruling basically was due to the SCOTUS belief that the CO civil rights commission "showed elements of a clear and impermissible hostility toward the sincere religious beliefs motivating his objection."
"As the record shows, some of the commissioners at the Commission’s formal, public hearings endorsed the view that religious beliefs cannot legitimately be carried into the public sphere or commercial domain, disparaged Phillips’ faith as despicable and characterized it as merely rhetorical, and compared his invocation of his sincerely held religious beliefs to defenses of slavery and the Holocaust."
"For these reasons, the Commission’s treatment of Phillips’ case violated the State’s duty under the First Amendment not to base laws or regulations on hostility to a religion or religious viewpoint. The government, consistent with the Constitution’s guarantee of free exercise, cannot impose regulations that are hostile to the religious beliefs of affected citizens and cannot act in a manner that passes judgment upon or presupposes the illegitimacy of religious beliefs and practices."
Here's where the next Christian baker may fail to win a SCOTUS case, if another is brought. The last part is important.
"Our society has come to the recognition that gay persons and gay couples cannot be treated as social outcasts or as inferior in dignity and worth. For that reason the laws and the Constitution can, and in some instances must, protect them in the exercise of their civil rights. The exercise of their freedom on terms equal to others must be given great weight and respect by the courts. At the same time, the religious and philosophical objections to gay marriage are protected views and in some instances protected forms of expression. As this Court observed in Obergefell v. Hodges, 576 U. S. ___ (2015), “[t]he First Amendment ensures that religious organizations and persons are given proper protection as they seek to teach the principles that are so fulfilling and so central to their lives and faiths.” Id., at ___ (slip op., at 27). Nevertheless,
while those religious and philosophical objections are protected, it is a general rule that such objections do not allow business owners and other actors in the economy and in society to deny protected persons equal access to goods and services under a neutral and generally applicable public accommodations law."
So this was a very narrow ruling. The SCOTUS did not side with the baker in that his religious beliefs allow him to refuse to serve gays. It appears the only reason SCOTUS sided with the baker is because the CO court and civil rights commission was overtly hostile to the baker's religious beliefs.
https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinion...6-111_j4el.pdf
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