Wedding cake figures are displayed in 2013 at Masterpiece Cakeshop in Denver. | AP Photo Supreme Court agrees to take up Colorado gay wedding case

The Supreme Court has agreed to decide whether private businesses have the right to decline to provide services for gay weddings due to religious objections to participating in such ceremonies.

The justices announced Monday that they will hear a case presented by a Colorado bakery owner who claims his rights to free exercise of religion and free speech were violated when he was found to have run afoul of a state anti-discrimination law by turning down a gay couple’s order for a wedding cake in 2012.


The appeal by Masterpiece Cakeshop and its owner Jack Phillips, expected to be argued this fall, is the court’s first significant foray into the issue of gay rights since the landmark 2015 ruling that the Constitution requires states to recognize same-sex marriage.

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The dissenters in that case warned that the decision guaranteeing gay-marriage rights would trigger a wave of litigation from religious individuals and organizations resisting efforts to force them to provide services to same-sex couples.