US baker who refused to bake gay wedding cake back in court over gender transition cake
Image: Image: Ted Eytan / Flickr, licensed under Creative Commons 2.0.
The Colorado baker who triumphed in the Supreme Court over his right to refuse to bake a wedding cake for a same-sex couple on religious grounds is now suing the state over his refusal to bake a cake for a trans woman.
In June 2018, Autumn Scardino said she asked for a cake to celebrate the anniversary of her transition – with blue on the outside and pink on the inside – and was refused, NPR reported.
Lawyers for Jack Phillips, owner of Masterpiece Cakeshop, said the state is “continuing to single out Jack for punishment and to exhibit hostility toward his religious beliefs.”
In June, regulators in Colorado ruled there was enough evidence to support a claim of discrimination and sent Scardino and Phillips to court-ordered mediation.
“The woman on the phone told me they do not make cakes celebrating gender changes,” Scardino wrote in her complaint.
“That’s a cake I can’t create for anybody,” Phillips said. “I know the Bible says that God created male and female and that we don’t get to choose that, and we don’t get to change that.
“And I don’t feel like the government has a right to compel me to participate in creating a cake that promotes that message,” he told Colorado Public Radio.
Phillips is suing the state seeking a permanent injunction to prevent anti-discrimination laws being enforced against him.
He is also seeking $100,000 in damages.
Colorado’s governor, John Hickenlooper, is named as the defendant in the case and has said that it’s expected the case will head to the Supreme Court all over again.
The verdict handed down in the same-sex wedding case did not clarify if refusing to provide goods and services to LGBTI people is a matter of free speech.
The decision comes after, in recent months, a New Zealand baker refused to make a wedding cake for a lesbian couple from Brisbane.
