Alliance Defending Freedom
CV NEWS FEED // The Colorado Supreme Court has dismissed a lawsuit filed against a Christian baker who refused to make a pro-transgender cake, on the grounds that the plaintiff did not follow the proper filing process.
This is the third such legal case in the past 12 years related to Jack Phillips, owner of Masterpiece Cakeshop, and his right to free speech.
“Enough is enough. Jack has been dragged through courts for over a decade. It’s time to leave him alone,” stated Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF) Senior Counsel Jake Warner in an October 8 press release after the decision. “Free speech is for everyone.”
ADF attorneys have been representing Phillips since the first lawsuit was filed against him in 2012. Phillips refused to create a custom cake in celebration of a same-sex wedding on the grounds that such an action violated his Christian beliefs. The Colorado Civil Rights Commission filed a lawsuit against Phillips in response. That case escalated to the US Supreme Court, which sided with Phillips in 2018.
Phillips faced another struggle when he refused to create a cake in celebration of a “gender transition.” The customer who requested the cake, attorney Autumn Scardina, who claims to be the opposite sex, also later “requested a cake depicting Satan smoking marijuana,” CatholicVote previously reported:
The ensuing second lawsuit, filed by Phillips against the Colorado Civil Rights Commission once more, was eventually dropped and settled by the state after ADF unearthed evidence of the Commission’s anti-religious hostility.
Scardina filed the third lawsuit, which escalated to the Colorado Supreme Court, against Phillips in 2019. Oral arguments for this case were set to take place on June 18 this year.
In an interview before the oral arguments, Phillips had said, “I want to serve everybody who comes in and treat them the best way that I can with the most respect. I want them to realize that I’m a follower of Christ — that I want to serve them, but there are also cakes that they might ask for what I would not be able to create because of the message.”
The press release states that the ruling in favor of Phillips to drop the case “does not address Phillips’ free speech rights,” but later adds that his free speech rights as an artist remain protected by a US Supreme Court ruling in another case, 303 Creative v. Elenis.
As CatholicVote previously reported, in 2023, the US Supreme Court ruled 6-3 in favor of website designer Lorie Smith, who faced a lawsuit for her refusal to design websites with messages contrary to her Christian beliefs.
ADF Senior Counsel Warner said in his statement after the latest lawsuit against Phillips was dropped, “As the U.S. Supreme Court held in 303 Creative, the government cannot force artists to express messages they don’t believe.”
