(Official Washington Examiner editorial, Oct. 13) After Colorado cake artist Jack Phillips won another major victory for religious liberty, judges nationwide should start dissuading anyone else from using the courts to harass anybody in like manner.
Better yet, voters should stop electing Democrats on the state and federal levels who appoint judges and commission members who side with harassers rather than upholding First Amendment freedoms. Either way, though, judges should consider treating some of these cases as “frivolous lawsuits” with appropriate financial penalties and perhaps consider professional sanctions against lawyers who pursue particularly egregious claims meant solely to badger the defendant.
After 12 years in the news, Phillips’s situation is well known. A devout, traditionalist Christian, Phillips will serve anybody, but he will not create a message contrary to his beliefs. He was first punished by the Colorado Civil Rights Commission for refusing to make a cake celebrating a homosexual wedding ceremony. He eventually won a narrowly worded ruling at the U.S. Supreme Court, only to be subject to further suits by a transgender person for whom Phillips declined, on separate occasions, to make confections celebrating a gender transition and representing Satan smoking marijuana.
In this latest case arising from the transgender person’s demand, the Colorado Supreme Court dismissed the lawsuit, but, unfortunately, only on technical grounds. Rather than accept the logic of the U.S. Supreme Court’s rulings in Phillips’s earlier case and others, which would have meant affirming Phillips’s rights, and the rights of all Coloradoans, to freedom of religious conscience, the Colorado court merely decided the transgender suit had been filed in the wrong form and venue…..
It would help if the U.S. Supreme Court would be even more definitive in affirming that religious liberty encompasses the expressive rights of owners of businesses that rely on personal creativity. In Phillips’s earlier case, the high court identified an openly anti-Christian bias from the Colorado Civil Rights Commission but did not fully acknowledge Phillips’s underlying First Amendment liberty. In the other key recent case affirming business owners’ expressive rights, 303 Creative LLC v. Elenis, the court ruled in 2023 on the grounds of free speech rather than free exercise of religion.
Still, the moral and constitutional imperatives, not to mention the overwhelming trend of Supreme Court case law, should make it obvious that business owners and their workers merit robust protection of their religious liberty….. [The full editorial is here.]
