The Supreme Court could decide whether to take up this week a second case related to whether artists can be required to provide services for same-sex weddings even if it goes against their religious beliefs.
[Also read: The 6 blockbuster cases to watch as the Supreme Court term ends]
The court already issued a ruling involving a Colorado baker who refused to make a specialty cake for a same-sex marriage. But that ruling, Masterpiece Cakeshop v. Colorado Civil Rights Commission, left open the major question about whether religious beliefs are a valid reason for refusing an order.
On Thursday, the justices met for a private conference to discuss a related case, this one involving a dispute between Arlene’s Flowers and its owner, Barronelle Stutzman, and a gay couple, Robert Ingersoll and Curt Freed.
The case came to the Supreme Court by way of the Washington Supreme Court, which ruled that Stutzman violated a state civil rights law when she declined to make a floral arrangement for Ingersoll and Freed’s wedding in 2013.
Stutzman appealed the state court’s ruling to the U.S. Supreme Court nearly a year ago, in July 2017, and it was discussed during the justices’ private conference in November.
But the petition sat largely dormant while the Supreme Court heard Masterpiece Cakeshop this term.
This month, the justices announced its decision in that case, ruling 7-2 in favor of baker Jack Phillips, who refused to bake a cake for a same-sex couple’s wedding reception because of his religious beliefs.
[Colorado baker: People from all over ‘thrilled’ by Supreme Court’s ruling in wedding cake case]
In its narrow ruling, the Supreme Court focused on the Colorado Civil Rights Commission’s treatment of Phillips, and found the commission violated Phillips’ rights under the First Amendment when it acted with hostility toward his sincerely held religious beliefs.
That decision didn’t resolve the larger issue, but Justice Anthony Kennedy opened the door for more work, and wrote that the “outcome of cases like this in other circumstances must await further elaboration in the courts.”
The Supreme Court could choose to hear the case involving the Washington florist, decline to do so, which would leave in place the ruling from the state supreme court, or kick the case back to the state courts for rehearing due to its ruling in Masterpiece Cakeshop.
Lawyers for Stutzman are asking the court to toss out the decision from the Washington Supreme Court and send the case back to the lower courts in light of the Masterpiece Cakeshop decision.
“That would allow the state courts to consider the evidence of government hostility toward the faith of Barronelle Stutzman,” lawyers for Stutzman wrote in court filings.
Stutzman’s attorneys cited the decision by Washington state officials to file a lawsuit against without having received a complaint as evidence of the state’s mistreatment of their client.
They also argued that in its ruling against the florist, the state trial court compared Stutzman to the owner of a 7-Eleven who refused to serve black customers.
“The state, in short, has treated Barronelle with neither tolerance nor respect,” her lawyers wrote.
But responding to the new brief from Stutzman, lawyers for Ingersoll and Freed, as well as the state of Washington, want the Supreme Court to decline the case.
“We strongly disagree there’s evidence of religious bias,” Elizabeth Gill, a senior staff attorney with the ACLU, said.
In a supplemental brief filed with the court, lawyers for Ingersoll and Freed said Stutzman has “not properly presented a claim of religious hostility” to the Supreme Court, and said Stutzman’s lawyers “provide no cite to any fact in the record for the belated assertion that the state of Washington has treated Ms. Stutzman with ‘neither tolerance nor respect.’”
“Our clients in Arlene’s Flowers feel the same way about accessing — they’re trying to make sure people don’t have to experience what they did, and we’re hopeful the Supreme Court, and if not the Supreme Court, the Washington courts will recognize the case is about this kind of discrimination, which has no place in the public marketplace,” Gill said.
The state put it more bluntly, saying the filing from Stutzman’s attorneys “packs several irrelevant and misleading claims into its few pages.”
The Supreme Court could announce as soon as Monday whether they’ll hear Stutzman’s case.
Editor’s note: An editor erroneously changed the reporter’s story to say the Supreme Court could rule this week on the ‘arrange the flowers’ case. It has been corrected to say the high court may decide to take up the case this week.
