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One of the most famous cases from the U.S. Supreme Court is the Masterpiece Cakeshop Ltd. v. Colorado Civil Right Commission. In this case which primarily was addressing whether it is constitutional right for business to discriminate on the bases of the owner’s beliefs raised various significant issues. In this case, a gay couple sued the bakery over allegedly discrimination. The couple wanted a cake designed for them to celebrate their marriage, however, the bakery declined, citing that it will be against Christian faith. While a commission from the state of Colorado alleged that the baker’s actions breached state antidiscrimination laws, the Supreme Court ruled in favor of the baker. However, the ruling failed to establish judicial precedent on the questions of questions of discrimination and first amendment rights (Liptak, 2018). This position paper seeks to discuss the case and address whether the law was constitutional, and if the baker’s action were protected by the constitution.

This law can be interpreted in terms of the tension all antidiscrimination statutes pose between liberty and equality. Every law that seeks to forbid discrimination based on any ground such as race, religion, or even sexual orientation, on the other hand deniers the liberty to serve or to hire. This presented one of the major contentions against the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which forbids public places from discriminating on basis of race and prohibits employers from discriminating their customers or employees in terms of sex, religion, race, or even sex (Bernstein, 2001). Therefore, this law extensively interferes with the baker’s freedom to exercise liberty and choose his own customers. However, the Congress and the courts deem curbing discrimination more crucial than protecting the right to discriminate.

The Commission had found it in order to perform a formal hearing as the baker’s actions seemed to breach the Colorado Anti-Discrimination Act which forbids business from discriminating in any grounds such as sexual orientation. According to the law, it was unlawful for an entity or individual to either indirectly or directly withhold or refuse a group or an individual based on race, color, creed, nationality of origin, or even sexual orientation the equal enjoyment of services, goods, facilities, advantages, accommodation, or privileges of a public place of accommodation (Liptak, 2018). Following the sending of the case to a state administrative law judge by the Commission, the judge ruled against the bakery, agreeing that the baker’s actions amounted to violating Colorado’s public accommodation statute. Though the state Court of Appeal affirmed this ruling, the Colorado Supreme Court overturned the ruling, citing elements of comprehensible and impermissible hostility towards the baker’s sincere religious beliefs which motivated his objection to design and make the gay couple a wedding celebration cake (Liptak, 2018).

In its ruling, the Supreme Court did not reach a central ground, but rather largely consider on a statement made by a commissioner in subsequent meeting. According to the commissioner, freedom of religion could be applied to justify any kind of discrimination, and in this case, this freedom was a contemptible piece of rhetoric that the baker used to hurt the gay couples (Liptak, 2018). As a result, Justice Kennedy noted this argument as not only “disparaging” to religion, but also hostile towards baker’s religion as it characterized the baker’s religion as insincere and insubstantial. Such an argument was inappropriate for a commission tasked with the serious duty of fair and neutral of Colorado antidiscrimination policy (Liptak, 2018). In concluding its rule, the Supreme Court noted that the commission had violated Colorado duty provided under the First Amendment, which provides that the state was not to base its regulations or laws on hostility to religious viewpoint or religion.

In evaluating this decision by the Supreme Court, it is crucial to consider whether there was impermissible religion hostility, which called for protection under the First Amendment. From the first piece of evidence that the court applied, it did not comply with the provision that discrimination is not animus against religion. As provided by the Supreme Court in Employment Division v. Smith (1990), the right to religion does not offer a basis for an exception from the state’s law. In the second piece, the commission proves the truth on how religion has been used to justify discrimination, and express the view that one should not be able to exercise their right in a way which harms others. Basing from these reviews, the evidence is very weak to sufficiently support a violation of the First Amendment.