Posted on 04/28/2016 12:07:55 PM PDT by Rio
The Gresham bakers who made national headlines after refusing to bake a cake for a same-sex wedding are fighting back against Oregon regulators.
In a brief filed in the Oregon Court of Appeals this week, Aaron and Melissa Klein say the Oregon Bureau of Labor and Industries violated state and federal laws by forcing them to pay $135,000 in damages to the lesbian couple.
The legal team behind Sweet Cakes by Melissa argues the labor bureau violated the Kleins' rights as artists to free speech, their rights as Oregonians to religious freedom and their rights as defendants to a due process.
They also argue the fine was excessive and that Labor Commissioner Brad Avakian, who praised an LGBTQ advocacy group on Facebook the year before the hearing, should have recused himself.
"There is little to be said for [the bureau's] interpretation" of the law, the Kleins' attorneys wrote in a 615-page brief. "It lacks support in statute or precedent, equates being gay with a celebration rejected by many gay people, and forces people to convey messages against their will and religious beliefs — all while, at a minimum, raising serious constitutional questions."
And the Kleins' court fight, though based in Oregon, could have national implications. At a time when North Carolina and Mississippi have passed laws allowing businesses to refuse service to lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender customers, the Kleins have challenged a decade-old Oregon law that prevents that kind of discrimination.
That means whatever happens to the Kleins here could ultimately shape what happens to florists, photographers and bakers across the country.
"This case gives us pause, as does what we see happening across the country," said Jeanna Frazzini, co-director of LGBTQ advocacy group Basic Rights Oregon. "It's really been striking the way the Kleins have become poster children for this movement across the country that aims to undermine the very basic civil rights and human dignity of LGBT people."
The controversy began three years ago when Rachel Bowman-Cryer and her mother, Cheryl McPherson, visited the bakery to test cakes for Bowman-Cryer's upcoming wedding.
Bowman-Cryer had purchased a cake from Sweet Cakes by Melissa before, but this time, Aaron Klein turned her away. Klein said his company didn't bake cakes for same-sex weddings.
Rachel Bowman-Cryer said during the BOLI hearing that the experience left her "humiliated and ashamed and destroyed and questioning — questioning whether anybody or not would accept us as a married couple."
She and her wife, Laurel Bowman-Cryer, filed complaints with Oregon's Bureau of Labor and Industries.
An administrative judge ruled the Kleins had violated an Oregon law that bans discrimination against gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender people in jobs and in places that serve the public.
Labor Commissioner Brad Avakian ordered the Kleins last year to pay the Bowman-Cryer's damages for emotional and mental suffering.
"This case is not about a wedding cake or a wedding," Avakian, now a candidate for Oregon secretary of state, wrote in his final order. "It is about a business's refusal to serve someone because of their sexual orientation. Under Oregon law, that is illegal. Within Oregon's public accommodations law is the basic principle of human decency that any person, regardless of their sexual orientation, has the freedom to fully participate in society."
The Kleins have said all along they planned to appeal. And the brief repeats many of the arguments the Kleins made earlier in the case. It focuses on big ideas — such as the freedom of religion — as much as it does on small details, including posts on Avakian's Facebook page.
The appeal "continues to drag out a case that has been extremely painful for the (lesbian) couple involved," Frazzini said.
The Sweet Cakes case was one of several religious freedom disputes tried last year as part of a national debate that's intensified since a June 2015 U.S. Supreme Court decision established same-sex marriage as a constitutional right.
Last month, the Washington State Supreme Court agreed to hear the case of florist Barronelle Stutzman, a Richmond, Wash. woman who refused to provide flowers for a longtime customer's same-sex ceremony.
And on Monday, the Colorado Supreme Court declined to take an appeal from a Denver-area "cake artist" who'd been ordered to make desserts for same-sex weddings.
But few defendants have attracted as much notoriety as the Kleins. Donors from across the country have contributed more than half a million dollars to the Gresham couple. And in February, a former lawyer for President George H.W. Bush, took over their case. C. Boyden Gray, working with nonprofit law firm First Liberty, will represent the Kleins at no cost.
First Liberty senior counsel Ken Klukowski said the Kleins asked his Plano, Texas, firm to take on their case. He agreed because he believes theirs "is an issue of paramount importance for the nation."
"This is one of the most important cases in the country regarding how religious liberty is going to coexist in our society with new attitudes regarding marriage," Klukowski told The Oregonian/OregonLive in February. "The first amendment guarantees every person fundamental right to free speech and the free exercise of religion, how you act out your faith -- not just the words you say."
Will the Oregon Bureau of Labor and Industries order the gay caterer to pay Westboro Baptist Church $135,000 in damages?
Insanity. This, in a short slice of our lifetime.
If you had gone to anyone even as late as 1980 and said in 36 years, men will be able to go into women’s restrooms because they self-identify as a woman, and homosexuals could sue a wedding planner who refused to book a homosexual “wedding”, they would think you were insane.
In Oregon, and (I'm afraid) in America as a whole, people like this are the majority.
What evidence d you have for that? These are hired on-line trolls. The Human Rights Council and GLAAD and other homosexual organizations have hundreds of millions of dollars, they hire trolls by the thousands, a kind of stoop labor.
A woman named Anita Bryant was hounded by the left 40 years ago for saying that these exact things were going to happen.
Here’s what she said in 1977:
“What these people really want, hidden behind obscure legal phrases, is the legal right to propose to our children that theirs is an acceptable alternate way of life.”
And she was RIGHT!!!!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anita_Bryant
What always gets ignored or downplayed by these perves and their supporters is that Sweet Cakes did not refuse because they were gay. Sweet Cakes had in fact made them cakes before and had done other things. The was only to refuse for this specific wedding, totally within their religious expression rights. But for the perves and their supporters, the truth doesn’t matter — only the objective. This country is going to hell!
bump
“I’ve always believed the art aspect of the product would be the saving grace...”
A baker in the small town where I live was approached by some gays to bake a phallus cake for a party. She told them no, that’s not how she wants to use her talent, and they went away—this time.
Nobody had ever seen these people before. They didn’t live here. They think they’re Freedom Riders, travelling the country to harass Christians.
Anybody know if they have a GoFundMe type site?
That’s been the goal of the homo agenda all along. Historically it has always been.
That and also the news site may kick of rational comments. Happens all over the place.
IIRC, GFM banned the donations to them.
“make the cake with salt identifying as sugar...”
Doesn’t matter what you put in it They aren’t likely to eat the cake. The whole point is to force someone who disagrees with their lifestyle to submit.
What evidence??? I follow the news. I expect it will soon be celebrating the overwhelming victory of Secretary of State Brad Avakian.
I don’t think it is about destroying Christianity so much as it is about getting a big financial windfall. They knew this bakery would not want to provide them with a cake for their “wedding” so they targeted them, knowing there would be a big pay-off for them. Most bakers would have made the cake, and been grateful for the business. Their only real motivation is money, it is not about hurt feelings. I suspect they were absolutely thrilled by their refusal.
Hope the attorney delays the case substantially until after January 20, 2017.
That is my view as well. Wedding cakes are not set out in a display case for people to buy off the rack. They are custom work, involving not just interviews with the couple, but often a set-up at the wedding venue, sometimes also an employee to cut the cake and box the leftovers, strongly implying endorsement — especially if the artist's delivery truck has identifying logos on it and is parked outside the event.
When I worked as a designer, I turned down plenty of clients for personality reasons and types of work for content reasons. Sometimes I said I was too busy; sometimes I said "I don't do any work involving XYZ." Some people were angry, but nobody could sue me, then.
If they can prove that the caterer refused to serve them because they were Baptists. If they did it because the Westboro people were hate-filled jerks then that isn't a protected class.
They had some sort of "fund-me" site and cleared hundreds of thousands of dollars.
New Oregon governor?
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