Colorado baker challenges gender transition cake ruling

• Jack Phillips won a partial Supreme Court victory after refusing to bake a gay couple’s cake.
• He is challenging a separate ruling he violated the state’s anti-discrimination law.
• A transgender woman requested a birthday cake that had blue frosting on the outside and pink inside.

A Colorado baker who won a partial Supreme Court victory after refusing to make a gay couple’s wedding cake on religious grounds a decade ago is challenging a separate ruling that he violated the state’s anti-discrimination law by refusing to make a cake celebrating a gender transition.

On Wednesday, a lawyer for Jack Phillips urged Colorado’s appeals court to reverse a decision made last year in a lawsuit filed by a transgender woman.

Autumn Scardina called Phillips’ suburban Denver cake shop in 2017 to request a birthday cake with blue frosting on the outside and pink frosting on the inside to celebrate her gender transition. Phillips, a Christian, testified at trial last year that he did not believe anyone could change genders and that he would not celebrate “someone who believes they can.”

Phillips’ attorney, Jake Warner of the conservative Christian legal advocacy group Alliance Defending Freedom, said the ruling was incorrect. He claimed that requiring Phillips to make a cake with a message contrary to his religious beliefs amounts to forcing him to say something he does not believe, infringing on his right to free expression.

Phillips’ wife initially told Scardina that the bakery could make the cake before Scardina volunteered that the design was meant to celebrate her gender transition.

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According to John McHugh, one of Scardina’s lawyers, Scardina did not ask the shop to endorse her idea, but rather to sell her a cake that they would sell to anyone else. He stated that whether Phillips sells a cake to someone cannot be determined by what the client tells him while he is making the cake.

Outside the court, both Scardina and Phillips discussed the larger issues at hand. The case, according to Scardina, is about the “dignity of LGBTQ Americans and Coloradans, as well as the rule of law.” Phillips stated that he was fighting for the rights of all Americans to live their consciences “without fear of punishment” from the government.

The Colorado Civil Rights Commission was found to have acted with anti-religious bias in enforcing the anti-discrimination law against Phillips after he refused to bake a cake commemorating Charlie Craig and Dave Mullins’ wedding in 2012. The commission was unfairly dismissive of Phillips’ religious beliefs, according to the justices.

The Supreme Court did not rule on the larger question of whether a business can use religious objections to refuse service to LGBTQ people at the time. However, it will have another chance in the coming months when it hears a different case challenging Colorado’s anti-discrimination law.

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