Ricochet is reporting on the state of Colorado
continuing to harass the owners of Masterpiece Cakeshop:
On June 26, 2017, the same day that the Supreme Court agreed to take up Masterpiece Cakeshop v. Colorado Civil Rights Commission, an attorney asked Phillips to create a cake designed pink on the inside and blue on the outside, which the attorney said was to celebrate a gender transition from male to female. Phillips declined the request because the custom cake would have expressed messages about sex and gender identity that conflict with his religious beliefs. Less than a month after the Supreme Court ruled for Phillips in his first case, the state surprised him by finding probable cause to believe that Colorado law requires him to create the requested gender-transition cake.
Firstly I believe this was a total setup. No one who has not been under a rock and sleeping like Rip Van Winkle didn't know what and who Masterpiece Cakeshop was and what they were not down with. Particularly if said person was in Colorado. I believe, 100% that this person went there with the
intention of creating a litigious situation. I also believe that they were sent there by a member or members of the commission.
Secondly I believe that the reason the commission went after Masterpiece again is because of the
softer than jello reasoning that made up the majority decision by the SCOTUS. The
majority decision against the state of Colorado was based on the fact that transcripts showed that the commissioners had been
prejudicial to the religion of the owners of Masterpiece. It DID NOT rule based on the free speech and free exercise of religion;
which it should have.
This left the door open for the Colorado commission to harass Masterpiece so long as they "watched their mouths" during the proceedings so that an appeals court could not rule that they were being discriminatory. I wrote about this:
Indeed, it appears that had the state commissioners not been on their SJW warpath and were professionals, they may have prevailed. People put under the state gun should be sure to note any and all arguments that are presented to them. This case shows that SJW type of talk that is regularly found on social media and even MSM can be used in court. This is a very good thing.
The downside of this decision is that it failed, spectacularly to support the idea that enumerated rights trump these so called "protected classes" and the privileges they are afforded. Clarence Thomas discusses this in his concurring opinion.
And Justice Thomas agreed saying:
Court of Appeals concluded that Phillips’ conduct was not expressive and was not protected speech. It reasoned that an outside observer would think that Phillips was merely complying with Colorado’s public-accommodations law, not expressing a message, and that Phillips could post a disclaimer to that effect. This reasoning flouts bedrock principles of our free-speech jurisprudence and would justify virtually any law that compels individuals to speak. It should not pass without comment
And his comment, in order to refresh the memories:
States cannot punish protected speech because some group finds it offensive, hurtful, stigmatic, unreasonable, or undignified. “If there is a bedrock principle underlying the First Amendment, it is that the government may not prohibit the expression of an idea simply because society finds the idea itself offensive or disagreeable.”Johnson,supra, at 414....If the only reason a public-accommodations law regulates speech is “to produce a society free of . . . biases” against the protected groups, that purpose is “decidedly fatal” to the law’s constitutionality, “for it amounts to nothing less than a proposal to limit speech in the service of orthodox expression.”
