Expand / Collapse search
Watch TV
Menu

This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. ©2024 FOX News Network, LLC. All rights reserved. Quotes displayed in real-time or delayed by at least 15 minutes. Market data provided by Factset. Powered and implemented by FactSet Digital Solutions. Legal Statement. Mutual Fund and ETF data provided by Refinitiv Lipper.

OPINION

William McGurn: Christian baker Jack Phillips is back in court again for refusing to bake a cake

Can the government compel people to create speech or artistic expressions to which they profoundly object?

By William McGurn The Wall Street Journal
Published
close
Fox News Flash top headlines for March 23 Video

Fox News Flash top headlines for March 23

Fox News Flash top headlines are here. Check out what's clicking on Foxnews.com.

Jack Phillips is America’s most famous baker. People have taken him all the way to the Supreme Court in hopes of getting it to force him to bake them one of his custom cakes. This week he’s back in the dock, again defending his refusal to bake a custom cake with a message he says goes against his Christian faith.

Phillips owns Masterpiece Cakeshop in Lakewood, Colo., and holds traditional views on marriage and sexuality. The first legal action against him came via the Colorado Civil Rights Commission, when in 2012 he declined to bake a custom cake for a same-sex wedding and found himself accused of unlawful discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation. This time he’s being sued because he wouldn’t bake a cake celebrating a gender transition.

CLICK HERE TO GET THE OPINION NEWSLETTER

"Jack is being targeted for his religious beliefs," says Kristen Waggoner, general counsel for the Alliance Defending Freedom, who defended Phillips in his first case and continues to represent him. "His opponents are weaponizing the law to punish and destroy him because he won’t create expression that violates his Christian faith. They want to make the law an arm of cancel culture."

CLICK HERE TO GET THE FOX NEWS APP

In the first go-round, Masterpiece Cakeshop v. Colorado Civil Rights Commission (2018), the Supreme Court ruled 7-2 for Mr. Phillips. But it did so narrowly, on grounds that the commission had displayed "clear and impermissible hostility" to Mr. Phillips’s religious beliefs. (One commissioner compared Mr. Phillips’s invocation of his Christian beliefs to defenses of slavery and the Holocaust.) The court left unresolved the key constitutional question: Can the government compel people to create speech or artistic expressions to which they profoundly object?

CLICK HERE TO CONTINUE READING WILLIAM McGURN'S COLUMN IN THE WALL STREET JOURNAL

William McGurn is a member of The Wall Street Journal editorial board and writes the weekly "Main Street" column for the Journal each Tuesday. Previously he served as Chief Speechwriter for President George W. Bush.