Posted on 04/10/2013 12:27:44 PM PDT by Mount Athos
State Attorney General Bob Ferguson on Tuesday filed a consumer protection lawsuit against Arlene’s Flowers & Gifts, a Richland florist that refused to supply flowers to the same-sex marriage of a longtime customer.
Ferguson said he sent a March 28 letter to owner Barronelle Stutzman asking her to reconsider and supply flowers to customer Robert Ingersoll. Through an attorney, Stutzman declined to change her position.
“As Attorney General, it is my job to enforce the laws of the state of Washington,” said Ferguson. “Under the Consumer Protection Act, it is unlawful to discriminate against customers based on sexual orientation. If a business provides a product or service to opposite-sex couples for their weddings, then it must provide same sex couples the same product or service.”
The lawsuit by Ferguson is bound to revive a warning raised by opponents of marriage equality in last fall’s Washington Voter’s Pamphlet statement against Referendum 74. Foes stated:
“People who disagree with this new definition (of marriage) could find themselves facing sanctions, as has occurred elsewhere. Church groups have lost their tax exemptions. Small businesses were sued. Wedding professionals have been fined.”
The supporters of same-sex marriage, in their rebuttal, stated: “Lawsuits haven’t increased in states with same-sex marriage. Liberty and pursuit of happiness are core American values.”
An employee at Arlene’s Flowers and Gifts said late Tuesday that Stutzman was not present, adding: “None of us will have any comment.” Last month, Stutzman told KEPR-TV in the Tri-Cities:
“He (Ingersoll) said he decided to get married and before he got through I grabbed his hand and said, ‘I am sorry. I can’t do your wedding because of my relationship with Jesus Christ.’ We hugged each other and he left, and I assumed it was the end of the story.”
Ingersoll and his partner, Curt Freed, were decade-long customers of Arlene’s Flowers & Gifts. They went online with the refusal and the story went viral. Stutzman refused to change her position, saying: “It’s a personal conviction. It’s not a matter of being right or wrong. It’s my belief.”
The AG’s office has filed a complaint in Benton County Superior Court asking for a permanent injunction requiring Arlene’s Flowers & Gifts to comply with provisions of the Consumer Protection Act. It is asking that a $2,000 fine be imposed for every violation.
But Stutzman’s attorneys warned the AG that any legal action Ferguson takes would result in “an immediate challenge in federal court,” and indicated that “a number of national non-profit organizations . . . are ready for a fight.”
Benton County rejected Referendum 74 by a 50,000-29,000 vote margin in the November election. Only one place in Eastern Washington, Whitman County, voted in favor of marriage equality. The measure passed statewide thanks to heavy support in populous King County.
And beyond that, business is tough in most parts of the country and it is wise to do profitable business. Now, agreeing to officiate the ceremony as a Pastor...that's another thing altogether, but I don't see the florist, the caterer, the DJ and the janitorial crew having a moral component here other than to do what they are contracted to do. I also agree it is within the right of any business owner to refuse any customer for any reason. I just don't think refusing paying customers is good stewardship.
Not to mention the fact that for a wedding, the florist would usually go to the church for the set-up and breakdown of arrangements. That was probably too involved for her comfort.
You can say that again!
What happened to the signs I used to see:
We reserve the right to refuse service to anyone!......
Her best defense may be that the flowers were for a wedding ceremony where the operative word ‘wedding’ connotes a long established religious rite.
So she may have a 1st Amendment religion argument trump any equal rights arguments.
Surely if she refused based on race or national origin, she would lose as society will not tolerate this sort of discrimination.
She might be on losing ground if she refused homosexuals in general as a group designated by Washington State law as a protected class. But apparently she sold flowers to homosexuals but not for their ‘weddings’, hence she is on religious grounds.
Homosexuals do not need to trample on the long established religious usage of the words ‘marriage’ or ‘wedding’. They can use other words such as ‘union’ or ‘merger’. If a homosexual couple were to telephone her to order up flowers for their ‘merger ceremony’ or a ‘civil union reception’, I don’t think she would have refused. She is merely drawing a line in the sand to protect the meaning of the word ‘wedding’ as the joining of one man and one woman in religious matrimony.
There is no explicit law yet that says ***religious institutions*** must recognize and accept homosexuality. The law I believe requires the state to recognize homosexual marriage applications. A state recognized marriage contract can then be used to govern wills and estates, employer benefits and health insurance and so on. The state should use the phrase ‘social pairing application’ or ‘coupling application’ and not ‘marriage application’ for both heterosexual and homosexual couples. And the terms, definitions and statutes should be written to carefully emphasize the scope pertains to pairs or couples and not to triangles or polyamors and so on, else all meaning is lost.
Although I haven’t reviewed the Washington State law (RCW) statutes on ‘gay marriage’, I seem to recall it was confined to the STATE requirement that homosexual couples be eligible to receive FROM THE STATE a marriage certificate. I don’t believe it said anything with respect to ‘weddings’ so I wouldn’t expect the State AG to have a solid case against this lady.
So this is indeed a test case for homosexual marriage statutes regarding state offices issuing marriage certificates to extend out and attempt to govern external associations and assemblies regarding private social and religious rites and celebrations.
IMO the state should be barred altogether from using the word ‘marriage’ in any of its functions and instead use terms such as pair assemblage, pair bond, domestic pair, civil union and so on. The word ‘marriage’ has deep religious significance, is older than any state function involving marriage and should be hands off to any state official function.
Indeed.
Whatever happened to all those signs we used to see in Mom & Pop stores? “We reserve the right to refuse service to anyone?” Has that gone by the wayside now?
Or will my local 7-11 now ( or soon ) be forced to serve shirtless, shoeless “customers”?
Because you’re exactly right: until money changes hands and/or contracts are signed, there’s no “ customer/ vendor” relationship.
I suppose this crowd will tell us: No WAY will any store be forced to serve people without shoes or shirts. Yeahhh, riiiight, where have we heard that kind of “ assurance” before?
Besides, what ever happened to the good ole fashioned American right to simply not patronize a business? Isn’t it good enough that you have the right to NOT shop somewhere, you have to force others to not patronize the same location?
Yeahhh, the left is all about “ tolerance”. Here’s an idea: why don’t the homosexuals go to another flower shop ? I doubt there is a shortage of flower shops that sympathize with them.
freedom of association ring a bell?
JD Bristol, attorney for Arlene’s, said his client has many customers and employees who are gay and the claim that she is “discriminating on the basis on sexual orientation is nonsense.”“This is about gay marriage, it’s not about a person being gay,” Bristol said. “She has a conscientious objection to homosexual marriage, not homosexuality. It violates her conscience.”
The suit stems from a March 1 incident in which Robert Ingersoll went to Arlene’s to purchase flowers for his upcoming wedding. Stutzman refused him service, citing her “relationship with Jesus Christ.”
In its suit, the Attorney General’s Office said the florist discriminated against Ingersoll based on his sexual orientation in violation of Washington’s anti-discrimination laws and its Consumer Protection Act. The state is seeking $2,000 in penalties and a permanent injunction requiring the florist to comply with state laws.
Bristol believes the state is attempting to make an example of his client and said she intends to stand by her convictions.
Making floral arrangements for a wedding is a creative process, not as simple as handing a couple some flowers, he said. “It takes artistic talent to do that. All artists consider what they do to be an expression.
“I one hundred percent believe this is a freedom-of-expression and free-exercise-of-religion issue,” he said. “What the government is saying here is that you don’t have the right to free religious exercise.”
Unfortunately, this is Ninth Circus country.
Gay ”marriage” and marijuana are both legal in Washington state.
Your laws cannot override ones right to practice their religion freely.
Business owners need to stand up to this BS all over the country!
Sure, but you still can't legally grow marijuana, you can't smoke it in public, you can't even legally buy it yet (except as a medical user). Even once it is available, it will simply be a recreational activity one can choose to participate in privately, or not.
Whereas homosexual advocacy is in your face 24 hours a day, you can't avoid it, you can no longer criticize it openly even in church, you can't follow your religious conscience and refuse to cater to it, you can't do anything even expression of religious freedom and First Amendment rights if it offends them.
No where near the same import.
In a nutshell, religious expression is expressly protected by 1A, while refusal of service on basis of sex is not constitutionally protected. And express constitutional protections trump non-enumerated protections regardless what state laws say.
Also, while misguided liberals argue that sex equality is protected by the Equal Protections Clause of Sec. 1 of 14A, if they would bother to read Sec. 2 of 14A then they would find that Sec. 2 discriminates on basis of sex, age and citizenship regardless of Equal Protections Clause.
It’ll have to go to the SCOTUS, because this sort of discrimination is legal in WA state. Clergy and churches are exempted.
In Obama’s world it is the God=fearing, bitter clingers who are to be monitored.
Thank you for the correction and the explanation.
What happened to, “We have the right to refuse service to anyone?”
That went out the window with the anti-discrimination laws starting with race. Freedom of association means one ought to have the right to refuse service to anyone for any reason (only in private transactions, not the government). Before accusing me of being racist, our favorite free market economists, who happen to be black, would agree with me.
Once the door was opened for government to tell business people they have to accept certain customers, it was bound to become limitless.
If one business turns away a customer for any reason, then it will lose out on some cash. There will be another business that will deal with that customer. The free market works beautifully when it is allowed to operate.
I’d say it’s time for 10,000 good conservative citizens to occupy the neo-Nazi office of State Attorney General Bob Ferguson and prevent his Hitler operation from going forward.
I didn’t say or imply that they were equal, just that both are legal in that state.
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