Not long ago, a panel of the D.C. Circuit held that cigarette companies had a First Amendment right to refuse to print warning labels on their packs (mercifully reversed by the full appeals court). After the city of Seattle raised its minimum wage, a business group sued, claiming that paying higher wages would leave them less money to spend on advertising, and thus supposedly violate their First Amendment rights. That argument has failed—so far, but it makes about as much sense as some that the Supreme Court has accepted.

More and more government regulations are being devoured by the category of “content-based regulation of speech”—and that that designation will trump any doctrine from any other area of law that might heretofore have applied.

These reflections were sparked by an amicus brief in Masterpiece Cakeshop, Ltd. v. Colorado Civil Rights Commission, the case of the gay wedding cake, which will be heard by the Supreme Court on December 5. The cake shop, and the baker who is a major shareholder, assert that his religious beliefs should allow him to refuse service—in violation of a state civil-rights statute—to a same-sex couple seeking a custom wedding cake.

Readers might be forgiven for thinking that this is the same issue that the court decided three years ago in Hobby Lobby Stores v. Burwell, in which a large for-profit corporation asserted, and partially won, a religious right to defy federal regulations and refuse health-care coverage for contraceptive methods.

But there are important differences. First, Hobby Lobby involved a claim under the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, meaning that a future Congress that disagrees with the result could amend the act to reimpose the requirement—while the cake shop wants the court to write an exemption into the Constitution, where it will be untouchable; secondly, Masterpiece Cakeshop involves a claim for exemption not from an employee-benefit regulation but from a civil-rights statute aimed at protecting the rights of the general public; and, third and perhaps most ominously, lawyers for the cake shop are aiming at carving a much bigger hole in government protection of individual rights.

Though they frequently speak of baker Jack Phillips’s personal religious faith, the claim they are advancing is much broader. The cake shop—and Jeff Sessions’s Justice Department—are asking the court to find an exemption from civil-rights statutes as a matter of freedom of speech, not “the free exercise” of religion. If their plea succeeds, anyone who objects to a government equality mandate may be able to claim that serving customers to whom they object is “compelled speech.” That right of exemption—however broad it may become—would extend not just to conscientious individuals but to for-profit corporations.

It is the latter concern that has spurred a group of 34 corporate-law scholars to file an amicus brief warning the court that a free-speech victory for the cake shop has the potential to create serious problems in the area of corporate law. The signatories are mostly, but not all, centrists or progressives—but all study corporate law and governance for a living.