Colorado Supreme Court tosses case against Jack Phillips over baker’s refusal to make pro-trans cake

Phillips had previously been ruled by lower courts to have violated Autumn Scardina’s rights by refusing to make a pink cake with blue frosting because Scardina identifies as transgender, Reuters reports.

Phillips had previously been the subject of another cake-related controversy after he refused to make a wedding cake for a gay couple. That case went to the Supreme Court, where it was concluded that requiring him to make the cake would infringe on his First Amendment rights.

The Colorado Supreme Court sidestepped a significant legal question by ruling that Scardina, a lawyer, could not sue the baker under the Colorado Anti-Discrimination Act in 2019 after having gone through a previous administrative process.

Scardina originally filed a discrimination complaint with the Colorado Civil Rights Division, claiming that Phillips declined to make a cake for a birthday in celebration of Scardina’s identity as a transgender woman. Scardina asserted that Phillips refused the order over Scardina’s gender identity.

The commission would reach a confidential settlement with Phillips without Scardina’s participation.

Justice Melissa Hart wrote that Scardina should have challenged that decision in an appeals court rather than file a new lawsuit. In a dissenting opinion, justice Richard Gabriel called the ruling “troubling” due to it “throw[ing] Scardina completely out of court.”

"I am concerned that Masterpiece and Phillips will construe today's ruling as a vindication of their refusal to sell non-expressive products with no intrinsic meaning to customers who are members of a protected class (here, the LGBTQ+ community)," he wrote, according to Colorado Politics. Phillips lawyer of the Alliance Defending Freedom said in a statement that the ruling brings with it the end of harassment against Philips.

In 2018, the US Supreme Court ruled in favor of baker Jack Phillips, but the decision was based on narrow grounds, steering clear of establishing a significant precedent that would permit individuals to claim religious exemptions from anti-discrimination laws.