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To: Bruce Campbells Chin
This was inevitable given that the Supreme Court declined to address this issue head-on the first time around. Other than in the concurrence by Gorsuch and Alito, the Court focused on the Commission's overt anti-religious bias during the state hearing, not on the core issue of whether the baker had the right to refuse service.

I suspect this is Kennedy's fault. He probably was unwilling to join a broader ruling, so Roberts could only get a majority by limiting the decision to the issue of bias at the hearing.

If you read through the oral arguments, it was obvious that this is exactly what Kennedy was going for. I brought it up on FR at the time after I'd read through it. It was also pretty obvious that for the 'conservatives' on the court, that they were pretty much begging for a way to get past prior precedent on the 'public accomodation' angle. They are boxed into a corner on that and know it.

108 posted on 08/15/2018 10:08:07 AM PDT by zeugma (Power without accountability is fertilizer for tyranny.)
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To: zeugma
The way to get past those is to say that they can refuse to create any particular product. They just can't base their refusal on who the customer is.

So, the best example of that is a straight person comes into a bakery, and asks to order a cake for the wedding of some gay friends. The baker refuses. in that case, the baker is not discriminating against the customer on the basis of sexual orientation, but rather refusing to make a certain product regardless of who orders it. So, they could make the same refusal if a gay couple came in to order that cake.

Conversely, if a gay couple came in to order a cake for the wedding of a straight friend, the baker could not refuse because that would be discriminating against the customer.

114 posted on 08/15/2018 11:21:00 AM PDT by Bruce Campbells Chin
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