Masterpiece Cakeshop, Ltd. v. Colorado Civil Rights Comm'n
The Supreme Court ruled that a Colorado civil rights commission violated a baker's religious freedom rights when it punished him for declining, on religious grounds, to make a wedding cake for a same-sex couple. The Court found the commission had shown open hostility toward the baker's faith during its proceedings.
The decision does not resolve the broader clash between anti-discrimination laws and religious objections in commerce; instead it turns narrowly on how this particular commission handled this particular case, leaving the larger question for future cases.
How it got here: A state administrative judge and the Colorado Civil Rights Commission ruled against Phillips; the Colorado Court of Appeals affirmed, and Phillips asked the Supreme Court to review the case.
The Case in Depth
What happened
Jack Phillips, a Colorado baker and devout Christian, refused to make a wedding cake for Charlie Craig and Dave Mullins in 2012 because of his religious opposition to same-sex marriage, though he offered to sell them other baked goods. The couple filed a discrimination complaint under Colorado's public accommodations law, which barred sexual-orientation discrimination by businesses serving the public.
The question before the Court
Could a state civil rights commission punish a baker for refusing, on religious grounds, to make a wedding cake for a same-sex couple, given how the commission handled his case?
Why it matters
Business owners with religious objections to serving same-sex weddings do not get a blanket win here, but government agencies enforcing anti-discrimination laws must show genuine neutrality toward religious objectors or risk having their rulings thrown out. Same-sex couples retain the right to expect equal service under public accommodations laws generally.
What changes now
The Colorado Court of Appeals' judgment enforcing the commission's order against Phillips is reversed, meaning the punishment imposed on him cannot stand. The decision is final on the merits of this dispute, but the Court explicitly left open how future, similar disputes between anti-discrimination laws and religious objections should be resolved, saying that question awaits further elaboration by courts.
What this does not decide
The Court did not decide the broader question of when businesses can refuse service based on religious objections to same-sex marriage, nor did it rule on Phillips' free-speech claim. The ruling rests specifically on the commission's hostile treatment of his case, not on a general right to deny service.
Concurrences and dissents
Concurrence — Justice Kagan
Justice Kagan agreed the commission acted with impermissible hostility but wrote to explain that a neutral, principled reason to distinguish Phillips from the other bakers did exist: those bakers refused a message they would have refused for anyone, while Phillips refused a product (a wedding cake) he otherwise sold to opposite-sex couples. She stressed the problem was the commission's flawed reasoning, not the underlying distinction between the cases.
Concurrence — Justice Gorsuch
Justice Gorsuch argued the commission's inconsistency ran deeper than the majority suggested, contending the Jack cases and Phillips' case shared all legally relevant features and that the commission impermissibly applied different legal standards to secular versus religious objections. He rejected Kagan's and Ginsburg's attempts to distinguish the cases as results-driven and inconsistent with treating religion neutrally.
Concurrence in part — Justice Thomas
Justice Thomas agreed the free-exercise violation alone was sufficient to decide the case, but wrote separately to argue Phillips also had a valid free-speech claim the majority declined to reach. He argued that creating custom wedding cakes is inherently expressive conduct protected by the First Amendment, and that the Colorado court's reasoning that Phillips could comply while disclaiming endorsement would justify virtually any law compelling speech.
Dissent — Justice Ginsburg
Justice Ginsburg argued the majority's grounds for finding hostility were too thin to overturn the judgment, contending the other bakers' cases were not truly comparable because their objection was to a specific demeaning message rather than to serving a protected class of customers. She would have affirmed the Colorado Court of Appeals and ruled for the couple.
How the Court got there
The legal reasoning, step by step
- The Court recognized that states can generally require businesses to serve gay customers on equal terms under neutral, generally applicable public accommodations laws, but any government action addressing a religious objection must itself remain neutral toward religion under the Free Exercise Clause.
- The Court looked at whether the commission's actual handling of Phillips' case reflected that required neutrality, drawing on factors from a past case about targeting religious practice: the history behind the decision, the sequence of events, and statements made by the decisionmakers themselves.
- Applying those factors, the Court found that some commissioners made comments at public hearings disparaging Phillips' faith as despicable and comparing his invocation of religious belief to historical justifications for slavery and the Holocaust, comments no one on the commission objected to or later disavowed.
- The Court also found the commission treated Phillips inconsistently compared to three other bakers who had refused, on secular grounds, to make cakes with anti-gay messages and were allowed to prevail before the same commission, without any principled explanation for the different outcomes.
- Because a governmental body deciding a religious objector's case must proceed with a neutral and respectful posture, and the record instead showed elements of hostility to religion, the Court concluded the commission's adjudication failed that neutrality requirement.
Doctrinal impact
Cases affected by this decision
Reaffirms Church of Lukumi Babalu Aye, Inc. v. Hialeah (508 U. S. 520)
The Court relied on this case's framework for judging whether government action is hostile toward religion.