Jack Phillips: Despite my court win, Colorado Civil Rights Commission is coming after me again Even after the Supreme Court ruled that I do not have to make wedding cakes for religious objections, I am under attack once again for my beliefs.

Jack Phillips | Opinion contributor

Show Caption Hide Caption Colorado baker sues again, this time over transgender issue The Colorado baker whose refusal to bake a wedding cake for a gay couple — citing religious beliefs — made it all the way to the Supreme Court is suing the state again.

For over six years now, my own state has been coming after me. And despite a recent rebuke from the Supreme Court, it shows no signs of slowing up.



I am the cake artist who owns Masterpiece Cakeshop, the small family business at the center of the blockbuster Supreme Court case earlier this summer. I design cakes for all people, no matter who they are. But I can’t create custom cakes that express messages or celebrate events in conflict with my faith.

In 2012, I was asked to create a wedding cake celebrating a same-sex marriage. I declined because I couldn’t celebrate that event consistent with my religious beliefs. But I offered to sell those customers anything else in my shop or design a cake for them for a different occasion.

Even after the ruling, I am targeted again

For that, my state punished me severely. It told me that, unless I was willing to violate my faith by celebrating same-sex marriages through my cake art, I needed to leave the wedding industry. So I did that, which cost my family 40 percent of our income and caused more than half of my employees to lose their jobs.

Meanwhile, the same state officials who punished me allowed three other cake artists to refuse a religious customer’s request for cakes with messages criticizing same-sex marriage.

When the Supreme Court looked at my case, Masterpiece Cakeshop v. Colorado Civil Rights Commission, it said that treating me worse than other bakers showed the government’s “clear and impermissible hostility” toward my “sincere religious beliefs.” The Supreme Court found that my First Amendment rights were violated.

Less than a month later, the state took steps to target me again. This time, it’s attempting to punish me for declining to create a different custom cake — one that the customer admits was intended to express a message contrary to my faith.

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On the same day that the Supreme Court announced it would hear my case, a Colorado lawyer called my shop and requested a cake that I’ve never before created. It was a cake with a pink interior and blue exterior that the lawyer said was to represent and celebrate a gender transition.

Because I believe that each person’s sex — whether male or female — is given by God and cannot be chosen or changed, the requested message is not one that I can express through my cake art. But my shop still told the caller that we’d be happy to sell them other items or design cakes with other messages.

Because of the suspicious timing and nature of that request, it’s not surprising that the lawyer filed a discrimination complaint. What’s shocking is that less than one month after the Supreme Court condemned the state’s hostility toward my faith, the government announced that it was coming after me again.

The state is contradicting the Supreme Court

The state did this even though it allows others — like the three bakers who were asked for cakes criticizing same-sex marriage — to decline requests for cakes expressing messages that they don’t communicate for anyone. The government is clearly treating me worse than others.



Perhaps worse yet, the state is contradicting what it told the Supreme Court in my prior case. The government said that I can decline to create custom cakes with pro-LGBT designs or themes, announcing in no uncertain terms that I am free “to decline to sell cakes with ‘pro-gay’ designs or inscriptions.”

Yet the cake requested in the new case obviously had a pro-LGBT design. The person who requested it even recognized that the design was intended to represent and celebrate a gender transition. The inconsistency between what the state told the Supreme Court and what it is doing to me now shows the government’s real policy: No matter the circumstances, I must be punished.

I have no choice now but to sue, via my Alliance Defending Freedom attorneys, the state officials who are discriminating against me. My hope is that the federal court will put an end to this bullying — and that it will do so soon. I’d like to get back to the life that my state keeps taking from me.

Jack Phillips is the owner of Masterpiece Cakeshop in Lakewood, Colorado.