Supreme Court to review right of private parties to deny services to same-sex couples

The U.S. Supreme Court today agreed to hear a wedding services case involving Colorado bakery owner Jack Phillips who refused to provide a cake for a same-sex wedding on grounds of religious conviction. Several similar cases involving t-shirt printers, florists, and photographers have previously made national headlines but the petitioner in Masterpiece Cakeshop, Ltd. v. Colorado Civil Rights Commission has raised two constitutional bases – free speech and free exercise of religion – for exemption from anti-discrimination statutes.

The issue the Court will be considering is:

Whether applying Colorado’s public accommodations law to compel Phillips to create expression that violates his sincerely held religious beliefs about marriage violates the Free Speech or Free Exercise Clauses of the First Amendment.

The Court calendar and briefs are available on SCOTUSBlog.com.  This will likely be the most-watched case in the term beginning in October 2017.