Court ruling is icing on cake of baker who refused gay couple

It took only 20 seconds for baker Jack Phillips to tell a gay couple he would not bake their wedding cake because of religious beliefs.

Baker Jack Phillips, right, hugs an unidentified man who was in Phillips' shop after the US Supreme Court ruled that he could refuse to make a wedding cake for a same-sex couple because of his religious beliefs. Picture: AP.

It took only 20 seconds for baker Jack Phillips to tell a gay couple he would not bake their wedding cake because of religious beliefs.

Six years later, the US Supreme Court has declared Mr Phillips had a constitutional right to refuse to bake the cake in a ruling that is a historic win for religious freedom over anti-discrimination laws.

Conservatives and free-speech advocates lauded the much-­anticipated decision, while rights groups warned it could lead to a slippery slope of wider discrimination against gays in the US.

But the court, in its 7-2 decision, took steps to ensure that its ruling does not open up the floodgates to broader discrimination against gay people in service industries.

The court stated that similar cases must be resolved “with tolerance, without undue disrespect to sincere religious beliefs, and without subjecting gay persons to ­indignities when they seek goods and services in an open market”.

Former Australian deputy prime minister John Anderson, who opposed same-sex marriage in last year’s postal plebiscite, said it was “highly likely that the courts would not have come to that conclusion” in Australia, arguing that “protection of religious freedom is simply not as deeply entrenched in our psyche or our law”.

“To me the very obvious point to raise on this sort of issue is to ­reverse the whole thing around and ask the question as to whether a gay baker should be obliged to write on a wedding cake that Mr and Mrs X wish to celebrate the only form of marriage that they consider is that between a man and a woman,” he said.

Australian Christian Lobby managing director Martyn Iles said the 7-2 decision showed that the religious rights of service providers was a “mainstream issue of freedom” and not a “niche freedom”. “The Ruddock review really needs to guarantee that Australians who have a faith identity and therefore different beliefs about issues like marriage have as much right to live out their beliefs and their identity in all spheres of their life as anybody else,” he said.

The US case examined the competing constitutional rights of same-sex couple Charlie Craig and Dave Mullins and that of Mr Phillips, pitting questions of ­religious freedoms and free speech against those of anti-­discrimination and gay rights.

Mr Craig and Mr Mullins filed a civil rights complaint against Mr Phillips after the baker declined to make the wedding cake for them in his Denver bakery in July 2012.

The Colorado Civil Rights Commission ruled against Mr Phillips, saying he had broken the state’s anti-discrimination laws.

However, in his majority decision, Supreme Court justice Anthony Kennedy said the commission had displayed an inappropriate “hostility” towards Mr Phillip’s religious convictions.

“The commission’s hostility was inconsistent with the first amendment’s guarantee that our laws be applied in a manner that is neutral toward religion,” Justice Kennedy said. But he cautioned that the court’s decision might not prove to be a precedent in all cases where the rights of same-sex couples are challenged on the ground of ­religious freedom.

“The court’s precedents make clear that the baker, in his capacity as the owner of a business serving the public, might have his right to the free exercise of religion limited by generally applicable laws,” Justice Kennedy wrote. “Still, the delicate question of when the free exercise of his religion must yield to an otherwise valid exercise of state power needed to be determined in an adjudication in which religious hostility on the part of the state itself would not be a factor in the balance the State sought to reach. That requirement, however, was not met here.”

Cameron Stewart is also US contributor for Sky News Australia.