The newest case against Jack Phillips, the infamous owner of Masterpiece Cakeshop, cannot be dismissed, a Colorado district court decided Wednesday. Autumn Scardina, a transgender woman, filed a complaint against Phillips in 2017 with the Colorado Civil Rights Commission, unsuccessfully. Scardina filed the suit after Phillips declined, due to his religious beliefs, to make a cake celebrating the transition Scardina made from male to female.
Scardina, an attorney, then filed a new lawsuit in state court that seeks monetary damages of more than $100,000 against Phillips. Although attorneys with Alliance Defending Freedom had requested that the case be dismissed, the court has decided to let it continue.
In an email, Jake Warner, Alliance Defending Freedom legal counsel, told the Washington Examiner:
There is no reason a transgender person must ask a person of faith like Jack Phillips to bake a specific cake if doing so violates their deeply held religious beliefs. Are there no other bakers in Denver? Of course there are, but transgender activists need someone to make an example of.
One of the many differences between Scardina’s case and the original Masterpiece case is that Phillips’s first opponent was a government entity, and government animus toward religion was ruled unconstitutional in the 7-2 ruling. Scardina, however, is a private citizen, so the case may end up winding its way to the Supreme Court again.
Still, Scardina’s attempt to prove discrimination has failed and will continue to fail. It’s absurd that the district court is allowing this case to continue. As with Phillips’s case before the Supreme Court, he did not discriminate refusing to serve someone. Phillips simply refused to create artwork and express a message that violated his religious conscience. It was an issue of forcing speech, not discrimination.
Phillips is not refusing to serve anyone because of their gender identity or sexuality, he is simply standing firm in the idea that he cannot be forced to create or endorse a message that violates his religious beliefs.
But the media, ACLU, gay and transgender activists, and other liberals broadcast Phillips as some kind of zealous, religious bigot. In the process, they have proved themselves to be anti-religious bigots who want to force their own beliefs on others. It’s why they want to force nuns to provide birth control. It’s why they want to force churches to hire whom the government mandates they hire. And it’s why they want to force people like Jack Phillips to say and do what they want.
It’s true that religious people sometimes twist their religion and use it as a guise for bigotry, but it’s also true that supposedly anti-discrimination laws are being used to force people of faith to violate their very deep-seated belief systems. Religious freedom and free speech are not just there to protect gay couples, transgender people, and other predominantly liberal minorities. It is also there to protect the people who would have their religious beliefs turned upside down and wielded against them as weapons.
Nicole Russell (@russell_nm) is a contributor to the Washington Examiner’s Beltway Confidential blog. She is a journalist who previously worked in Republican politics in Minnesota.
