Gay Wedding Cake Case: US Supreme Court Sides With CO Baker

WASHINGTON, DC -- The United States Supreme Court on Monday issued a 7-2 ruling in favor of a Lakewood, Colorado, baker who refused to make a wedding cake for a same-sex couple on religious grounds. The opinion emphasized the baker's right to free speech, as artistically manifested in cake design.

The opinion, written by Justice Anthony Kennedy, stated that Masterpiece Cakeshop owner Jack Phillips's claim that "using his artistic skills to make an expressive statement, a wedding endorsement in his own voice and of his own creation, has a significant First Amendment speech component and implicates his deep and sincere religious beliefs."

The ruling specifically targeted the Colorado Civil Rights Commission, which Kennedy said acted in a way that demonstrated "hostility" to Phillips's beliefs when it ruled against him. "The Colorado Civil Rights Commission’s consideration of this case was inconsistent with the State’s obligation of religious neutrality," the ruling said.

The case started in 2012 when Phillips said he would not make a cake for Charlie Craig and David Mullins.

The couple sued, and both the Civil Rights Commission and the state's Court of Appeals ruled in their favor.

Phillips is no longer making wedding cakes for anyone, according to the Masterpiece Cakeshop website, costing him 40 percent of his business.

"It's not just same-sex weddings I don't make cakes for," Phillips said in a video. "I also don't make bachelor party cakes or Halloween cakes with witchcraft or demons."

Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg submitted the dissenting opinion.

"What matters is that Phillips would not provide a good or service to a same-sex couple that he would provide to a heterosexual couple ... Phillips declined to make a cake he found offensive where the offensiveness of the product was determined solely by the identity of the customer requesting it."

Related: Gay Wedding Cake Case: 5 Things To Know About The SCOTUS Decision

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