The Washington State Supreme Court just delivered a huge blow against the cause of religious liberty, ruling against a Christian florist who had declined to service a same-sex wedding. Alliance Defending Freedom, a renowned Christian conservative legal organization, is representing the florist and and will appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court in what could be the most important religious liberty case of our age.
Barronelle Stutzman, the owner of Arlene’s Flowers in Richmond, Wash., was friends with Rob Ingersoll, a gay man who she’s described as “one of my favorite customers.” Stutzman served Ingersoll for nine years, giving him flowers for birthdays, Valentine’s Day, Mother’s Day, and other occasions.
But when Ingersoll asked Stutzman to provide a custom flower arrangement for his same-sex wedding, Stutzman knew she could not comply.
“I love Rob … I would gladly sell him prearranged flowers or loose flowers, but I knew that as much as I love Rob, I could not create something to celebrate an event that was totally against my faith,” Stutzman said in a video by Alliance Defending Freedom.
Stutzman was sued for declining to cater Ingersoll’s same-sex wedding, and the Washington State Supreme Court ruled against her in 2017. Last summer, the Supreme Court vacated that judgment and remanded it for further consideration by the Washington Supreme Court in light of Masterpiece Cakeshop v. Colorado Civil Rights Commission, where the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in favor of Christian baker Jack Phillips, who was asked to create a custom cake for a same-sex wedding.
Despite this, the Washington Supreme Court arrived at the same conclusion the second time around. In today’s decision, the court succinctly stated, “We reject the appellants’ expansive reading of Masterpiece Cakeshop.”
This shouldn’t be surprising. Masterpiece Cakeshop was a narrowly tailored decision focused on the Colorado Civil Rights Commission’s clear hostility to Jack Phillips’ Christian faith. It did not clearly leave a broader precedent regarding First Amendment religious exercise for Christian artists, and this is why Justices Stephen Breyer and Elena Kagan, both liberals, sided with the conservatives. The Masterpiece Cakeshop decision did not end the constitutional debate on this issue, and we were well aware of that when the ruling dropped last summer.
That said, the Washington Supreme Court still deserves criticism for getting this case completely wrong. While giving Masterpiece Cakeshop the narrowest interpretation possible, the court gave Obergefell v. Hodges, the landmark case that federally legalized gay marriage in 2015, the most expansive interpretation possible, to the point of dishonesty.
Even operating on the premise that Obergefell was rightly decided, that doesn’t justify what the court has delivered today. Arguing that two people of the same-sex have a Fourteenth Amendment right to be equal in the eyes of the government is one thing. To argue that those two people have a constitutional right to violate the liberty of contract, and more importantly, the First Amendment religious exercise of fellow citizens, is very different. The court’s decision today goes beyond the libertarian concept of freedom and into the waters of secular-left authoritarianism.
In an online media conference this afternoon, Alliance Defending Freedom’s John Bursch expressed his disappointment with the court’s ruling.
“In its decision today, the Washington State Supreme Court chose to ignore basic freedoms guaranteed to all Americans and to instead allow the state and the ACLU to target Barronelle specifically for her faith,” he said. “No one should be forced to participate in a sacred ceremony that conflicts with their beliefs under threat of government punishment.”
Bursch told Washington Examiner that he expected the Supreme Court to make a decision on the appeal in December 2019 or January 2020. If the Supreme Court decides to take the case, Bursch said oral arguments could come as early as April 2020 or as late as fall 2020.
I understand why conservatives may be upset about today’s ruling, but they really shouldn’t be. In fact, this is the perfect opportunity to set a broad precedent for the First Amendment freedom of religion.
Remember, Anthony Kennedy wrote both the Obergefell and Masterpiece decisions. Justice Brett Kavanaugh’s appointment, if anything, seems likely to permit a broader reading of the Masterpiece Cakeshop victory. Meanwhile, the three conservative-leaning justices who were on the court at the time of Obergefell were part of the dissent, and it would be quite odd for them to shift from there to granting Kennedy’s gay marriage ruling the most expansive reading possible. It would also be odd to expect Kavanaugh or Neil Gorsuch (who wrote the lower court opinion in the Hobby Lobby religious freedom case) to go further than Kennedy with respect to Obergefell.
In other words, liberals won the battle today. But in doing so, they may have set themselves up to lose the war next year.
