Colorado Bakery, In Court Again, Loses Attempt to Dismiss Transgender Discrimination Claim

Religion Clause ^ | 3/9/21 | Howard Friedman

[marshmallow]

In Scardina v. Masterpiece Cakeshop, Inc.,(CO Dist. Ct., March 4, 2021), a Colorado state trial court dismissed Colorado Consumer Protection Act claims against a bakery that has been the subject of extensive litigation over its refusal to design wedding cakes for same-sex weddings. In the current case, plaintiffs claimed that the bakery engaged in misleading advertising indicating that they would sell birthday cakes to LGBT individuals. The court dismissed the claim because "the most salient materials Plaintiff allegedly relied on are not advertisements," but were news articles and op-eds. However the court refused to dismiss plaintiff's Colorado Anti-Discrimination Act claim that she was discriminated against because of her transgender status when plaintiff refused to make a blue and pink cake celebrating her gender transition. The court said in part:

Whether making Plaintiff’s requested cake is inherently expressive, and thus protected speech, depends on whether Defendants would thereby convey their own particularized message, and whether the likelihood is great that a reasonable observer would both understand the message and attribute that message to Defendants....

[Fred Hayek]

This is predatory litigation.

[monkeyshine]

Whether making Plaintiff’s requested cake is inherently expressive, and thus protected speech, depends on whether Defendants would thereby convey their own particularized message, and whether the likelihood is great that a reasonable observer would both understand the message and attribute that message to Defendants

That's gobbledygook. Making art is inherently expressive regardless of what you do with it.

[Deaf Smith]

How/why are the Colorado courts defying the SCOTUS decision (Twice) in regards to the bakery?

Are not SCOTUS rulings Law and enforceable?

[Carl Vehse]

The Colorado courts defy the SCOTUS decision (Twice) in regards to the bakery because there is no punishment for them defying the decision.

[Captain Rhino]

This judgment basically says that:

Not doing something (that you didn’t offer to do to begin with) might be a crime IF the reason that you didn’t do it was because you thought you would be considered to be in agreement with the requester if you did do it.

The alleged offense is based entirely on what the defendant might be thinking when they refused to do something.

In so many words: WRONG THINK.

Unspoken in all this is the practically guaranteed celebration of the LGBTIQ community if they managed to coerce the baker into baking the cake. And their explicit declaration that, by implication, the baker, by agreeing to bake the cake, must now agree with the correctness of the Colorado state government enforcement action and the wrongness of their previous refusal to bake the cake.

In other words: RIGHT THINK.

Is any person, anywhere, at anytime, who refuses, when asked, to do something they did not offer/want to do, ever protected from such a thought crime-style accusation ... especially by the government?.

Does any one know anything about the judge who rendered this absurd judgment?

True Left/liberal activist (e.g., a Kool-Aid drinker)?

Or is this just a set up for a higher level court (USSC?) to dismiss the entire case with prejudice and slap down the commission who brought it?

[Organic Panic]

How the hell did a bunch of mentally ill perverts get so powerful?

[Aetius]

The prior “victory” the baker had in the Supreme Court was decided on very narrow grounds, so much so that it was less a victory than an invitation for the leftist bullies to try again but just be less blatant in their animus and bias against the baker.

If the matter returns to the Sup Court for a definitive ruling then it will come down to Roberts and Gorsuch if the terrible decision last summer that redefined “sex” to include sexual orientation and gender identity is any indication. That means sanity, conservatives, and the Constitution will most likely lose, and a “bake the cake bigot or be destroyed” rule will be triumphant.

[Lurker]

Someone should find the people filing these suits and disappear them and their lawyers.

Permanently.

L

[Scrambler Bob]

Blockchain and NFT the design.

Then charge 67 million dollars.

[conservativeimage]

Yet it’s ok for AutoZone to kick me out of their store and not sell me gas cans because I refuse to be terrorized by mask bullies.