This morning SCOTUS sided with the Christian baker at Masterpiece Cakeshop in Colorado.
Now, if you’re like this editor and get confused reading stereo instructions, you could use a simple breakdown of what the ruling actually means and thank goodness Popehat was front and center with a ‘lawsplainer.’
OK. By request, a mini Masterpiece Cakeshop lawsplainer.
The hard question presented by the case was this: did Colorado's anti-discrimination law violate the baker's First Amendment rights, to the extent it compelled him to create a cake for a same-sex wedding?
/1— YourFiveHatsAreUp (@Popehat) June 4, 2018
/2 The Supreme Court sided, 7-2, with the baker. But the Court did so on much narrower grounds than the baker, and advocates, hoped for.
The Court DID NOT resolve the conflict between religious belief and anti-discrimination law.
— YourFiveHatsAreUp (@Popehat) June 4, 2018
Awww, so that is where the ‘narrow’ piece comes from.
From the way the media reported this originally, it sounded like the ruling at 7-2 was somehow narrow.
Makes more sense now, eh?
/3 In fact, the Court expressly declined to resolve that. Instead, the Court found that the question has to be resolved through a process free of religious bias and animus violating the First Amendment, and that here the Colorado administrative procedure showed clear bias.
— YourFiveHatsAreUp (@Popehat) June 4, 2018
So it goes back to Colorado.
/4 Put another way, the Court said "however the question comes out, the decision-makers can't get there through express hostility to religious beliefs." The Court found that the Colorado administrative process showed just that anti-religious bias.
— YourFiveHatsAreUp (@Popehat) June 4, 2018
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Trying to put the baker out of business was pretty freakin’ hostile, true story.
/5 There's an array of concurring and dissenting opinions that don't change the result, but that's the core opinion of the Court. So: the tension between anti-discrimination and the First Amendment is left for another day . . .
— YourFiveHatsAreUp (@Popehat) June 4, 2018
Dammit.
/6 . . . . but Civil Rights Commissions can't indulge in gratuitous anti-religious rhetoric in the process of weighing such claims. /end
— YourFiveHatsAreUp (@Popehat) June 4, 2018
So a win, but not exactly a HUGE win for religious freedom.
All caught up?
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