Christian Cake Baker Turns the Tables, Sues Colorado for Anti-Religious Bias
By Thomas Jipping Published on August 29, 2018
https://stream.org/christian-cake-ba...eligious-bias/
...Here's the background....
...Courts in general, and the Supreme Court in particular, often prefer not to push the legal envelope very far, especially when volatile issues are involved. Here, the Supreme Court decided in Phillips' favor
without establishing an across-the-board rule....
...This was
(still) a significant decision for several reasons.
First, it recognized that conflicts like this involve a person's "sincere religious beliefs."
Second, it reaffirmed that the right of each individual to exercise religion is a fundamental constitutional right.
Third, it exposed ugly, anti-religious bias by a government agency and held that the First Amendment guarantees freedom from such bias.
Since the Supreme Court did not settle this conflict once and for all with an all-encompassing rule,
additional cases will help fill in the blanks and, hopefully,
pave the way to more robust protection for the exercise of religion.
That
includes Phillips' new case....
...
Phillips took the initiative and filed a federal lawsuit.
Assisted by the
Alliance Defending Freedom, Phillips' lawsuit makes
four legal claims.
First, he alleges that the government violated his First Amendment right to exercise his religion by
targeting,
showing hostility toward, and
discriminating against him
based on his religious beliefs and practices.
That's the most important issue, and it picks up where Phillips' first case left off. While his first case involved specific acts of anti-religious hostility by individual persons, Phillips is alleging that the government is
hostile to religion in a more general way.
Second, he alleges that the government violated his First Amendment right to free speech
by forcing him to "create and disseminate expression that violates [his] religious beliefs."
Third, he contends that the government
violated his 14th Amendment right to due process by the
"unfair and biased" way that it enforced the law against him.
And fourth, he argues that the government violated his
14th Amendment right to equal protection by treating his religiously motivated decision differently than those of others.
When Phillips declined to participate in an event that would violate his personal religious beliefs, he was not discriminating against the couple.
There is no reason that the Constitution's protection for individuals who wish to live their faith and laws prohibiting discrimination against groups of people in the marketplace cannot co-exist.
Those who regularly defend religious freedom know that this is a marathon, not a sprint.
Each case that exposes government hostility toward religious belief and practice challenges us to take our individual rights more seriously.