The Supreme Court ruled on June 30 in favor of Christian bakers who said Oregon’s law requiring them to make cakes to celebrate same-sex weddings infringed on their constitutional rights.
The decision came hours after the nation’s highest court issued a landmark 6–3 ruling in favor of Christian website designer Lorie Smith of 303 Creative who said a Colorado law that punished her for refusing to create websites for same-sex weddings violated her First Amendment rights.
“The First Amendment protects the rights of all Americans to speak freely and live according to their sincere religious beliefs,” said the bakers’ attorney, Trent McCotter of Boyden Gray and Associates in Washington.
“As the Supreme Court has recognized, carefully guarding these rights is all the more important when the beliefs expressed are controversial,” he said in a statement.
Left-wing activists have been targeting bakers for years for political purposes, asking Christian confectioners opposed to same-sex marriage to bake wedding cakes for gay marriage celebrations.
When the bakers refuse to make the cakes, these activists sue under anti-discrimination laws, hoping to secure favorable legal precedents.
In Masterpiece Cakeshop v. Colorado Civil Rights Commission (2018), the Supreme Court sided with Jack Phillips, a Christian baker whom a gay couple had asked to create a custom cake to celebrate their union, finding a state human rights commission had violated his First Amendment right to free exercise of religion.
The Kleins
Turning to the case at hand, in 2007, Aaron and Melissa Klein opened a family bakery, in Gresham, Oregon, called “Sweet Cakes by Melissa,” specializing in custom-designed cakes.
The Kleins made wedding cakes to celebrate marriages, which according to their faith are the sacred union of one man and one woman. They were willing to serve everyone who entered the shop but would not create any cakes with messages that conflicted with their faith, such as cakes with profanity, cakes celebrating divorce, or cakes advocating harm to others.
In 2013, when same-sex marriage was not yet formally recognized in Oregon, a lesbian couple asked the Kleins to make a custom-designed wedding cake to celebrate a same-sex wedding. As devout Christians, Mr. and Mrs. Klein believed that crafting a cake to celebrate the wedding would send a message of support for the wedding in violation of their faith. For this reason, they refused to make the cake.
An Oregon state commissioner heard charges against the Kleins for violating the state’s public accommodation law, fined them $135,000, and imposed a gag order preventing them from discussing the case and their religious beliefs in public.
The financial penalty and an internet-based boycott campaign forced their bakery out of business. They had planned to pass the business down to their children.
To make matters worse, anonymous attackers vandalized their property, broke into their home, and issued expletive-laden death threats against their family.
“Having to shut down the bakery was devastating,” Mrs. Klein said.
“Our family had worked so hard to build it. To watch it just disappear—it crushed me. I felt like I’d lost a part of myself,” she said, according to First Liberty Institute, a non-profit Christian conservative legal organization based in Plano, Texas, that organized the couple’s legal representation.
Appealing the Decision
The Court of Appeals of Oregon upheld the decision in 2016 but removed the gag order.
In June 2019, the Supreme Court vacated (pdf) the Oregon decision and remanded the case to the state appeals court to be reviewed in light of the Masterpiece Cakeshop ruling.
In January 2022, the Oregon Court of Appeals found the commissioner violated the First Amendment’s Free Exercise Clause by failing to act neutrally toward the Kleins’ religion. The court overturned the $135,000 fine but held the couple had still violated state law and remanded the case back to the commissioner.
In July 2022, without conducting a new hearing, the commissioner reduced the fine from $135,000 to $30,000, according to First Liberty.
But on June 30, in Klein v. Oregon Bureau of Labor (court file 22-204), the Supreme Court granted the petitions of the Kleins seeking review while at the same time skipping over the oral argument phase when the merits of the case would have been considered.
The court issued an unsigned order and did not explain its decision. No justices dissented.
The court also vacated the judgment of the Court of Appeals of Oregon, remanding the case to that court in light of its decision earlier that day in 303 Creative LLC v. Elenis.
Lawyers call this process GVR, which stands for grant, vacate, and remand.
‘The Case Is Not Over’
Kelly Shackelford, president, CEO, and chief counsel to First Liberty, weighed in on the ruling.
“It’s a win when the Supreme Court vacates a bad lower court decision like it did for Aaron and Melissa today, but the case is not over,” Mr. Shackelford said in a statement.
“The Kleins have been fighting for the First Amendment for over a decade and we will stand with them no matter how long it takes to get the victory they deserve,” he said.
The Epoch Times reached out to Oregon Department of Justice attorney Benjamin Gutman for comment but had not received a reply as of press time.
Oregon Democrats condemned the new ruling, the Oregon Capital Chronicle reported.
Rep. Val Hoyle (D-Ore.), who had ruled against the Kleins when she was commissioner of Oregon’s Bureau of Labor and Industries, denounced the Supreme Court justices as “extremists.”
“People can now discriminate based on their religious beliefs in public accommodation,” Ms. Hoyle said. “This is legalized discrimination and a dangerous precedent in the separation of church and state.”
Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.) also condemned the court.
“With the stroke of a pen, the Supreme Court constricted freedoms, and our LGBTQ+ friends, neighbors, and community members won’t be able to escape hate and discrimination as they go about their lives,” Mr. Merkley said.
“To realize the vision of America as a land of freedom and equality, we must be willing to take the steps to bring that vision closer to reality,” he said.
From The Epoch Times
