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Actually, this looks to me like a PYRRHIC victory.

As I said in a previous post.... the DECISION’s SCOPE IS LIMITED.

There’s a lot to be said for decisions that are narrowly limited to the point at hand. Just because our Congress is no longer responsible, taking up the mantle and legislating clearly, doesn’t mean we should be leaning on the SCOTUS to do our legislating. Besides, it was the baker himself who argued for a narrower construction (see Page 10).

“[..]there are no doubt innumerable goods and services that no one could argue implicate the First Amendment. Petitioners conceded, moreover, that if a baker refused to sell any goods or any cakes for gay weddings, that would be a different matter and the State would have a strong case under this Court’s precedents that this would be a denial of goods and services that went beyond any protected rights of a baker who offers goods and services to the general public and is subject to a neutrally applied and generally applicable public accommodations law. ”

They conceded that they had to make cakes for gay weddings. It was only the issue of artistic skills and expressive statement (1st Amendment) they fought:

For those who say this is a great victory,. I say it’s more like catching an opponent moving a pawn illegally. Sure, it stops their move in this case, but it’s no great victory in the game itself.

The decision has verbiage like the following (page 9):

““[t]he First Amendment ensures that religious organizations and persons are given proper protection as they seek to teach the principles that are so fulfilling and so central to their lives and faiths.” Id., at ___ (slip op., at 27). Nevertheless, while those religious and philosophical objections are protected, it is a general rule that such objections do not allow business owners and other actors in the economy and in society to deny protected persons equal access to goods and services under a neutral and generally applicable public accommodations law.”

That’s far from a rebuke of the general principle of public accommodations law and its ability to infringe (my word) on religious liberty. And this language wasn’t from a dissenter!

How about Page 12:

“And any decision in favor of the baker would have to be sufficiently constrained, lest all purveyors of goods and services who object to gay marriages for moral and religious reasons in effect be allowed to put up signs saying “no goods or services will be sold if they will be used for gay marriages,” something that would impose a serious stigma on gay persons.”