Colorado Supreme Court sides with Jack Phillips in lawsuit over gender transition cake
October 9, 2024
The Colorado Supreme Court has dismissed a lawsuit filed against Christian Baker Jack Phillips for his refusal, on religious grounds, to create a cake celebrating a person’s gender transition.
According to the Christian Post, the Colorado Supreme Court ruled 4-3 in favor of Masterpiece Cakeshop and dismissed a suit filed by Autumn Scardina, a biological man who identifies as a woman.
Justice Melissa Hart wrote the majority opinion which stated, in part, that Scardina’s lawsuit was filed before the discrimination complaint against Phillips could be properly processed.
Hart wrote, “Could the district court properly consider the claims of discrimination presented here? In light of this dispute’s procedural journey, it could not.”
The Justice noted that the Colorado Civil Rights Commission and Colorado Civil Rights Division had agreed to dismiss Scardina’s administrative complaint against Phillips, “without participation by Scardina.”
Hart continued, “Scardina could have appealed the Commission’s decision to close the administrative adjudication without providing the statutorily mandated order but [he] did not. Instead, [Scardina] brought [his] discrimination claim anew in the district court. We granted certiorari to determine, among other issues, whether Scardina properly filed [his] case in the district court. We conclude that [he] did not.”
The Christian Post reports that Scardina originally filed a complaint against Phillips and Masterpiece Cakeshop in 2019 over the refusal to create a pink cake with blue frosting to celebrate his gender transition.
That suit claimed that Phillips had violated the Colorado Anti Discrimination Act (CADA) and the Colorado Consumer Protection Act, though the latter claim was dismissed.
In June of 2021, Denver District Judge A. Bruce Jones ruled that Phillips had violated CADA, stating, “Defendants’ expressive conduct argument fails because Defendants presented no evidence that a reasonable observer would attribute any message that was conveyed by the cake to Defendants.”
In 2023 a three-judge panel of the Colorado Court of Appeals also ruled against Phillips, stating that the cake “expressed no message” and that “not all conduct constitutes speech.”
Phillips prevailed in a 2018 U.S. Supreme Court Case centering on his refusal to create a wedding cake celebrating same-sex marriage.
Photo: top, Credit: The Christian Post/Nicole Alcindor