{"id":19488,"date":"2018-06-04T11:25:37","date_gmt":"2018-06-04T15:25:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/philip.greenspun.com\/blog\/?p=19488"},"modified":"2018-06-04T11:25:37","modified_gmt":"2018-06-04T15:25:37","slug":"supreme-court-rules-against-gay-couple","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/philip.greenspun.com\/blog\/2018\/06\/04\/supreme-court-rules-against-gay-couple\/","title":{"rendered":"Supreme Court Rules Against Gay Couple"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Front-page NYT headline: &#8220;Supreme Court Rules Against Gay Couple in Cake Case, 7-2&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p>But <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2018\/06\/04\/us\/politics\/supreme-court-sides-with-baker-who-turned-away-gay-couple.html?hp&amp;action=click&amp;pgtype=Homepage&amp;clickSource=story-heading&amp;module=first-column-region&amp;region=top-news&amp;WT.nav=top-news\">the story<\/a> says that the case is\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Masterpiece_Cakeshop_v._Colorado_Civil_Rights_Commission\"><em>Masterpiece Cakeshop v. Colorado Civil Rights Commission<\/em><\/a>. In other words, the happy now-married couple is not part of the litigation so the ruling could not have been either for or against them.<\/p>\n<p>It didn&#8217;t come down as Harvey Silverglate had predicted (see <a href=\"http:\/\/philip.greenspun.com\/blog\/2018\/05\/01\/the-colorado-baker-case-at-the-supreme-court\/\">&#8220;The Colorado baker case at the Supreme Court&#8221;<\/a>), but seems to have hinged on the Supreme Court justices reading the minds of the state bureaucrats who punished the baker:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>\u201cThe neutral and respectful consideration to which Phillips was entitled was compromised here,\u201d Justice Kennedy wrote. \u201cThe Civil Rights Commission\u2019s treatment of his case has some elements of a clear and impermissible hostility toward the sincere religious beliefs that motivated his objection.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>So is the NYT headline accurate? Did the 7 justices rule against the potential cake customers or against the bureaucrats on a state commission?<\/p>\n<p>Another way to look at this is that the Supreme Court ruled in favor of litigation. Instead of a bright-line rule that would enable everyone to know in advance how a cake situation should be resolved, they suggest a more elaborate process for litigating cake-related disputes. The process has to include judges who, if they are hostile to religious believers, keep this hostility secret and find a neutral-sounding way to stick it to the haters.<\/p>\n<p>Related:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Klein_v._Oregon_Bureau_of_Labor_and_Industries\"><em>Klein v. Oregon Bureau of Labor and Industries<\/em><\/a> (cake shop fined $130,000 for their hatred)<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Front-page NYT headline: &#8220;Supreme Court Rules Against Gay Couple in Cake Case, 7-2&#8221;. But the story says that the case is\u00a0Masterpiece Cakeshop v. Colorado Civil Rights Commission. In [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-19488","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v28.3 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>Supreme Court Rules Against Gay Couple - Philip Greenspun\u2019s Weblog<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/philip.greenspun.com\/blog\/2018\/06\/04\/supreme-court-rules-against-gay-couple\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Supreme Court Rules Against Gay Couple - Philip Greenspun\u2019s Weblog\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Front-page NYT headline: &#8220;Supreme Court Rules Against Gay Couple in Cake Case, 7-2&#8221;. 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