The Colorado Supreme Court on Tuesday dismissed on procedural grounds a lawsuit against a Christian baker who refused to bake a cake for a transgender woman. The justices declined to comment on the free speech issues that brought the case to national attention.
Baker Jack Phillips was sued by attorney Autumn Scardina in 2017 after his Denver-area bakery refused to make a pink cake with blue frosting to celebrate her gender transition.
The justices said in the 6-3 majority opinion that Scardina had not exhausted her options to seek compensation through another court before filing the lawsuit.
This case was among many in Colorado that pitted the civil rights of the LGBTQ+ community against their First Amendment rights. In 2018, Phillips won a partial victory before the US Supreme Court after refusing to bake a cake for a gay couple’s wedding.
Scardina tried to order her cake on the same day the U.S. Supreme Court announced it would hear Phillips’ appeal in the wedding cake case. Scardina said she wanted to challenge Phillips’ claims that he would serve LGBTQ+ customers and denied that her attempt to get the cake was a setup for litigation.
Before filing the lawsuit, Scardina first filed a complaint against Phillips with the state and the Colorado Civil Rights Commission, which found probable cause to discriminate against her.
In March 2019, attorneys for the state and Phillips agreed to drop both cases under a settlement in which Scardina was not involved. She pursued the lawsuit against Phillips and Masterpiece Cakeshop on her own.
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This is when the case took a wrong turn, the judges said in Tuesday’s ruling. They said Scardina should have appealed the state’s settlement with Phillips directly to the state Court of Appeals.
Instead, the matter went to a state judge, who ruled in 2021 that Phillips violated the state’s anti-discrimination law by refusing to bake Scardina’s cake. The judge said that the case was related to refusal to sell a product, not coercion to speak.
The Colorado Court of Appeals also sided with Scardina, ruling that the pink and blue cake — on which Scardina requested no writing — was not protected by the First Amendment.
Phillips’ attorney had argued before the Colorado Supreme Court that his cakes were protected by free speech and that everything Scardina said she would do with the cake was significant to his rights.
Representatives for both sides said they were reviewing the ruling and had no immediate response.
& Edition 2024 The Canadian Press
