The U.S. Supreme Court decided to hear Masterpiece Cakeshop, Ltd. v. Colorado Civil Rights Commission. The case involves a Colorado cake baker who declined to make a cake for a gay couple’s wedding. When the Colorado Civil Rights Commission pursued the baker, he argued he was entitled to an exemption from Colorado’s civil-rights laws based on religious and free-speech grounds under the First Amendment. The links below include news coverage, relatively even-handed analysis, and analysis in support of and against the baker’s position that was posted before oral argument, which was scheduled for sometime in the October 2017 term. (This post has been regularly updated through the date of oral argument.)
News coverage
- Associated Press
- ReligionClause
- Nina Totenberg, NPR:A Supreme Court Clash Between Artistry And The Rights Of Gay Couples
- Richard Wolf, USA Today
- Washington Post
- Robert Barnes:
- Supreme Court Asked if Baker’s Case Protects Religious Rights or Illegal Discrimination
- Edible art: Bakers want Supreme Court to acknowledge there’s more to a cake than baking.
- In major Supreme Court case, Justice Dept. sides with baker who refused to make wedding cake for gay couple
- In major Supreme Court case, Justice Dept. sides with baker who refused to make wedding cake for gay couple
- Roxanne Roberts: Wedding cakes can be stunning creations. But do they qualify as art?
- Robert Barnes:
- New York Times
- David G. Savage, L.A. Times:
- Reuters
- Lawrence Hurley: Supreme Court’s cake case pits gay rights versus Christian faith
- Wall Street Journal
- Stephen Montemayor, (Minneapolis) Star Tribune: U.S. Supreme Court wedding cake case could affect St. Cloud couple’s suit against Minnesota Both sides in Minnesota will be watching Tuesday when the justices in Washington hear arguments in a parallel case from Colorado.
- CNN
- Bloomberg, Greg Stohr: Gay-Wedding Clash at U.S. Supreme Court Is No Piece of Cake
- ABA Journal
- Mark Walsh
- Debra Cassens Weiss,
- Kelsey Dallas, Deseret News
- Buzzfeed:
- The Economist
- Allie Yang, ABC News: Baker in Supreme Court wedding cake case says ‘I don’t judge’
- ReligionClause
- France24: US Supreme Court to rule on wedding cake that split America
- The Washington Times, Alex Swayer
- Above the Law
-
Elsewhere In America: We’re About To Go To The Mattresses Over Cake: Waiting on nine un-elected old people decide the fate of America.
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Objective (more or less) analysis
- SCOTUSblog:
- Amy Howe
- Case page (includes important documents and posts by SCOTUSblog contributors)
- Sarah Posner, The Nation: The Christian Legal Army Behind ‘Masterpiece Cakeshop’ A special investigation into the rise of Alliance Defending Freedom.
- ReligiousLiberty.tv
- Frank S. Ravitch on Freedom’s Edge: Freedom’s Edge Now Widely Available and a Note About the Masterpiece Cakeshop Case
- Mark Movsesian, First Things: Passion for Equality
- Kenneth Jost, Jost on Justice: ‘Straight Weddings Only’ Equals Discrimination
- ABA Journal
- Erwin Chemerinsky
- John Culhane, Politico: The Most Important Cake in America: The Supreme Court is about to decide whether bakeries have to make wedding cakes for same-sex couples. But it’s about much more than that.
Supporting baker’s exemption from civil-rights laws protecting LGBT rights
- USA Today
- Jack Phillips (the cake decorator who is a party to the case): Here’s why I can’t custom-design cakes for same-sex weddings
- SCOTUSblog
- Rick Garnett: Conscience, conditions, and access to civil society
- Hannah Smith and Eric Rassbach: Shotgun wedding? Forcing religious vendors to participate in wedding ceremonies
- Helen Alvaré: As a matter of marriage law, wedding cake is expressive conduct
- Mithun Mansinghani: Masterpiece Cakeshop and compelled participation in religious ceremonies
- The New York Times
- David Brooks: How Not to Advance Gay Marriage
- Robert P. George and Sherif Girgis: A Baker’s First Amendment Rights
- Online Library of Law and Liberty:
- Thomas Ascik
- John O. McGinnis
- Wall Street Journal
- Boston Globe
- National Review
- David French: Stop Misrepresenting Masterpiece Cakeshop
Against religious exemption
- SCOTUSblog
- Mary Bonauto: Commercial products as speech—When a cake is just a cake
- Tobias Barrington Wolff: Anti-discrimination laws do not compel commercial-merchant speech
- Eric Segall: Disentangling free speech and freedom of religion in Masterpiece Cakeshop
- Vanita Gupta: Discrimination is not a fundamental American value
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Scott Lemieux, Reuters: Commentary: Why Supreme Court must tell anti-gay baker his cakes aren’t art
- New York Times
- Editorial Board
- Jennifer Finney Boylan
- Bloomberg: Does refusing to bake a wedding cake count as speech?: Only under a misunderstanding of the Supreme Court’s First Amendment doctrine
- Garrett Epps, The Atlantic
- Jim Oleske on Take Care blog:
- Erwin Chermerinsky, Sacramento Bee: Is the right to discriminate in the Constitution? The answer’s a piece of cake
- Washington Post
- George F. Will: A cake is food, not speech. But why bully the baker?
- Eric Segall, on Dorf on Law:
- Rick Hills, Prawfsblawg: Who Cares Whether Cake-Baking Is “Expressive”? The Doctrinal Costs of Focusing on Private Burdens Rather Than Governmental Purpose
- Noah Feldman, Bloomberg: Bakers Can Be Artists, But They Still Can’t Discriminate: The Supreme Court should recognize that, however symbolic their products, Colorado businesses aren’t allowed to be anti-gay.
- Slate
- Joshua Matz, Take Care: Religious Freedom and the Masterpiece Case
Scholarly articles supporting the baker’s exemption
- Stephanie H. Barclay & Mark Rienzi, Constitutional Anomalies or As-Applied Challenges? A Defense of Religious Exemptions
Scholarly articles opposing an exemption