Years after a bakery refused to create a wedding cake for a same-sex couple, the Supreme Court has ruled in favor of Colorado bakery owner Jack Phillips. In 2012, Phillips refused to bake a cake for couple David Mullins and Charlie Craig because he said it went against his religious beliefs.
The official ruling for the case—Masterpiece Cakeshop, Ltd v. Colorado Civil Rights Commission—was 7-2.
In 2014, the Colorado Civil Rights Commission decided Masterpiece Cakeshop had violated Colorado's Anti-Discrimination Act, or CADA. In 2016, the Alliance Defending Freedom, a conservative legal nonprofit, petitioned the Supreme Court to hear the case.
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The Supreme Court's ruling held that the commission showed hostility toward Phillips based on his religious beliefs, as reported by CNN.
“The neutral and respectful consideration to which Phillips was entitled was compromised here,” Justice Kennedy wrote. “The Civil Rights Commission’s treatment of his case has some elements of a clear and impermissible hostility toward the sincere religious beliefs that motivated his objection.”
The two dissenting opinions came from Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Justice Sonia Sotomayor, according to CNN. Sotomayor argued: "When a couple contacts a bakery for a wedding cake, the product they are seeking is a cake celebrating their wedding—not a cake celebrating heterosexual weddings or same-sex weddings—and that is the service (the couple) were denied."
