Masterpiece Cakeshop v. Colorado Civil Rights Commission, 584 U.S. 617 (2018), was a case in the Supreme Court of the United States that addressed whether owners of public accommodations can refuse certain services based on the First Amendment claims of free speech and free exercise of religion, and therefore be granted an exemption from laws ensuring non-discrimination in public accommodations—in particular, by refusing to provide creative services, such as making a custom wedding cake for the marriage of a gay couple, on the basis of the owner's religious beliefs.
The case dealt with Masterpiece Cakeshop, a bakery in Lakewood, Colorado, which refused to design a custom wedding cake for a gay couple based on the owner's religious beliefs. The Colorado Civil Rights Commission evaluated the case under the state's anti-discrimination law, the Colorado Anti-Discrimination Act. The commission found that the bakery had discriminated against the couple and issued specific orders for the bakery. Following appeals within the state, the Commission's decision against the bakery was affirmed, so the bakery took the case to the U.S. Supreme Court.
In a 7–2 decision, the majority ruled that the Commission did not employ religious neutrality, citing the Commission's hostility towards Masterpiece owner Jack Phillips's religious objections. The Supreme Court found the Commission violated his rights to free exercise, and reversed the Commission's decision. The Court did not rule on the broader intersection of anti-discrimination laws, free exercise of religion, and freedom of speech, due to the complications of the Commission's lack of religious neutrality, which was later evaluated in 303 Creative LLC v. Elenis (2023).
Procedural history
Facts of the case
In 2012, same-sex couple Charlie Craig and David Mullins from Colorado made plans to be lawfully married in Massachusetts and return to Colorado to celebrate with their family and friends. At that time the state constitution prohibited same-sex marriage in Colorado, though by 2014 the state had allowed same-sex marriages, and the Supreme Court of the United States would affirm that gay couples have the fundamental right to marry in Obergefell v. Hodges 576 U.S. 644 (2015).
Craig and Mullins visited Masterpiece Cakeshop in Lakewood, Colorado, in July 2012 to order a wedding cake for their return celebration. Masterpiece's owner Jack Phillips, who is a Christian, declined their cake request, informing the couple that he did not create wedding cakes for marriages of gay couples owing to his Christian religious beliefs, although the couple could purchase other baked goods in the store. Craig and Mullins promptly left Masterpiece without discussing with Phillips any of the details of their wedding cake. The following day, Craig's mother, Deborah Munn, called Phillips, who advised her that Masterpiece did not make wedding cakes for the weddings of gay couples because of his religious beliefs and because Colorado did not recognize same-sex marriage at the time.
Colorado Civil Rights Commission
While another bakery provided a cake to the couple, Craig and Mullins filed a complaint with the Colorado Civil Rights Commission under the state's public accommodations law, the Colorado Anti-Discrimination Act, which prohibits businesses open to the public from discriminating against their customers on the basis of race, religion, gender, or sexual orientation. Colorado is one of twenty-one U.S. states that include sexual orientation as a protected class in their anti-discrimination laws. Craig and Mullins's complaint resulted in a lawsuit, Craig v. Masterpiece Cakeshop. The case was decided in favor of the plaintiffs; the cake shop was ordered not only to provide cakes to same-sex marriages, but to "change its company policies, provide 'comprehensive staff training' regarding public accommodations discrimination, and provide quarterly reports for the next two years regarding steps it has taken to come into compliance and whether it has turned away any prospective customers".
Colorado Court of Appeals
Masterpiece appealed the decision to the state Court of Appeals with the aid of Alliance Defending Freedom, and refused to comply with the state's orders, instead opting to remove themselves from the wedding cake business; Phillips claimed that this decision cost him 40% of his business. Alongside the Colorado Civil Rights Commission, the American Civil Liberties Union represented Craig and Mullins during the appeals. The state's decision was upheld on the grounds that despite the nature of creating a custom cake, the act of making the cake was part of the expected conduct of Phillips's business, and not an expression of free speech nor free exercise of religion. The court distinguished its decision in Craig from another case, brought to the Commission by William Jack, in which three bakeries refused to create a cake for William Jack with the message "Homosexuality is a detestable sin. Leviticus 18:22", citing that in the latter, the bakeries had made other cakes for Christian customers and declined that order based on the offensive message rather than the customers' creed, whereas Masterpiece Cakeshop's refusal to provide Craig and Mullins with a wedding cake "was because of its opposition to same sex marriage which...is tantamount to discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation".
The Supreme Court of Colorado declined to hear an appeal.
Before the Supreme Court
Petition for writ of certiorari
Masterpiece Cakeshop petitioned the U.S. Supreme Court for certiorari (review), under the case name Masterpiece Cakeshop, Ltd. v. Colorado Civil Rights Commission, of the following question:
Whether applying Colorado's public accommodations law to compel Phillips to create expression that violates his sincerely held religious beliefs about marriage violates the Free Speech or Free Exercise Clauses of the First Amendment.
Both the Colorado Civil Rights Commission and the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) urged the Supreme Court to reject the appeal, fearing that a Court decision in favor of the business would create a "gaping hole" in civil rights laws on the basis of religion. The final briefs at the certiorari stage were received in December 2016. The Court agreed to hear the case in the 2017 term and heard oral arguments on December 5, 2017.
Masterpiece requested that the Supreme Court review the Colorado anti-discrimination law under strict scrutiny. It argued that while the state's law was intended to assure that same-sex couples had access to the same services as heterosexual couples, the law went too far in its enforcement, since Craig and Mullins were easily able to obtain a wedding cake from a different vendor in the state. Masterpiece further argued that the anti-discrimination law can be used to selectively discriminate against religion, as the Commission has allowed bakers to refuse to provide cakes with anti-same-sex marriage messages on them, even though the Commission said these refusals were appropriate due to the offensiveness of the messages and not on the basis of religion. The State and the ACLU countered these points, stating that the law was aimed only at conduct of a business, not their speech, and in cases like a wedding cake, "[no] reasonable observer would understand the Company's provision of a cake to a gay couple as an expression of its approval of the customer's marriage". They further argued that the cakeshop could provide catchall language to explain that any services they provide do not endorse any expressions of free speech associated with it, an allowance within the anti-discrimination law.
Amicus briefs
Around 100 legal briefs were filed by third parties, roughly equally split in supporting either side of the case. Many civil rights organizations filed briefs in support of Craig and Mullins, including the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, the Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, Southern Poverty Law Center, the Washington Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights and Urban Affairs, and the Civil Rights Forum, a group of plaintiff-side civil rights attorneys. The National Women's Law Center argued in its amicus brief that just as the Court compared the effects of race and sexual discrimination in Roberts v. U.S. Jaycees, it should compare those harms to those created by sexual-orientation discrimination in this case.
The United States Department of Justice under the Trump administration, supported Phillips. While the Department asserts that anti-discrimination laws are necessary to prevent businesses that provide goods and services from discriminating, these laws cannot be used to compel a business into expressing speech they do not agree with, nor used to provide goods and services with such expressions without the ability for the business to assert they do not agree with those expressions. The brief was criticized by several organizations, including those that support LGBT rights, claiming the brief as a pattern of hostile actions by the Trump administration and fearing that a decision in favor of Masterpiece would enable such businesses to have a "license to discriminate".
Oral arguments
Oral arguments for the plaintiffs were provided by Kristen Waggoner for the Alliance Defending Freedom, representing Phillips, and the Solicitor General of the United States Noel Francisco, presenting the federal government's case as amicus curiae in support of Masterpiece Cakeshop. The defendants' arguments were given by Colorado Solicitor General Frederick Yarger, on behalf of the Colorado Civil Rights Commission, and David D. Cole of the ACLU, on behalf of Craig and Mullins. Questions asked by the Justices attempted to determine where the bounds of a cake baker's rights and the rights of those soliciting his services would extend by considering several hypothetical situations involving the making of and selling custom cakes, including situations related to racial and gender-preference discrimination.
Experts believed the Supreme Court's opinions in the case would be divided, with the ultimate decision falling on the opinion of Justice Anthony Kennedy, who has historically been a swing vote in his term. In his past case history, he had been a strong supporter of gay rights (having authored all of the landmark gay rights rulings by the Supreme Court: Romer v. Evans in 1996, Lawrence v. Texas in 2003, United States v. Windsor in 2013, and Obergefell v. Hodges in 2015), and a corporation's freedom of speech in his majority opinion for Citizens United v. FEC 558 U.S. 310 (2010), and freedom of religion through his concurrence with the majority in Burwell v. Hobby Lobby Stores, Inc. 573 U.S. 682 (2014).
Opinion of the Court
Majority opinion
The Court issued its ruling on June 4, 2018, reversing the decision of the Colorado Civil Rights Commission. Justice Anthony Kennedy authored the majority opinion, joined by Chief Justice John Roberts, and Justices Samuel Alito, Stephen Breyer, Elena Kagan and Neil Gorsuch. The opinion stated that although a baker, in his capacity as the owner of a business serving the public, "might have his right to the free exercise of his religion limited by generally applicable laws", nevertheless, a State decision "in which religious hostility on the part of the State itself" is a factor violates the "State's obligation of religious neutrality" under the Free Exercise Clause of the First Amendment to the Constitution. Kennedy's opinion stated that the Commission's review of Phillips's case exhibited hostility towards his religious views. The Commission compared Phillips's religious beliefs to defense of slavery or the Holocaust. Kennedy found such comparisons "inappropriate for a Commission charged with the solemn responsibility of fair and neutral enforcement of Colorado's anti-discrimination law". Kennedy's opinion also cited the three exemptions the Commission previously granted for the non-discrimination law arising from the William Jack complaints. The opinion also noted differences in handling previous exemptions as indicative of Commission hostility towards religious belief, rather than maintaining neutrality. Kennedy's opinion noted that he may have been inclined to rule in favor of the Commission if it had remained religiously neutral in its evaluation.
Concurring opinions
Justice Kagan wrote a concurring opinion, joined by Breyer, emphasizing the narrow grounds of the ruling. Justice Gorsuch also wrote a concurring opinion, joined by Alito. Both Kagan's and Gorsuch's concurrences considered how the Commission handled Masterpiece differently from prior exemption requests. Both agreed that the Commission exhibited hostility towards Phillips's religious beliefs and concurred with the reversal. Kagan posited the Commission could have ruled differently in the two situations if they had stayed religiously neutral. Gorsuch indicated the Commission should maintain consistency among similar cases.
Justice Clarence Thomas wrote another opinion, concurring in part and concurring in the judgment, joined by Gorsuch. Thomas asserted that the majority opinion did not consider the free speech or the anti-discrimination implications of the case, despite significant attention during oral arguments. Thomas expressed support for Masterpiece, both on grounds of free speech and free exercise.
Dissenting opinions
Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg wrote the dissenting opinion, joined by Justice Sonia Sotomayor. Ginsburg believed that the Commission acted fairly in evaluating the case, saying "what critically differentiates them is the role the customer's 'statutorily protected trait' played in the denial of service".