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For more than 10 years, a Colorado law has been misused to punish me for something I didn’t do. For more than 30 years, my family and I have quietly operated Masterpiece Cakeshop, baking treats and specializing in custom-designed cakes to celebrate special occasions. I welcome everyone into my shop, treat them with respect, and if they ask for a particular kind of custom cake, do my best to create something beautiful and memorable. Like most of us, I too have sincere beliefs that guide and inspire my life, so I can only create custom cakes that will express or...

Masterpiece Cakeshop owner Jack Phillips has scored a victory of sorts in his ongoing lawsuit for refusing to bake a gender transition cake, with the Colorado Supreme Court agreeing to hear his appeal.Baker Jack Phillips decorates a cake in his Masterpiece Cakeshop in Lakewood, Colo., on Sep. 21, 2017. (Rick Wilking/Reuters)Last week, in a win for Mr. Phillips' years-long legal fight, the Colorado Supreme Court finally agreed to hear his case after a lower court held that Colorado authorities can force the baker to put messages on cakes that violate his personal beliefs, according to a case announcements posting.Mr. Phillips,...

Denver, Colo., Jan 26, 2023 / 15:45 pm A Colorado appellate court has ruled against a baker who appeared in court once again for declining to make a cake that contradicts his religious beliefs. While Jack Phillips’ successful U.S. Supreme Court case concerned his refusal to make a same-sex wedding cake, he now faces a civil lawsuit for declining to make a cake celebrating a purported gender transition of a transgender-identifying attorney. In a Thursday decision, a Colorado Court of Appeals three-judge panel sided with Autumn Scardina, a man who identifies as a transgender woman. Scardina said Phillips and his...

Sometimes decisions made in less than thirty seconds, even those in accordance with one’s faith, can alter the course of one’s life, and perhaps the nation.Such was the case with Jack Phillips, proprietor of Masterpiece Cake Shop in Lakewood Colorado, a Denver suburb. After learning baking skills and honing his artistic craft at several area bakeries, he opened his own shop in 1993, providing baked goods, most notably custom cakes to his customers.In 2012, two men named David and Charlie asked Mr. Phillips to create them a wedding cake. Mr. Phillips calmly explained he could not honor their request because...

Colorado baker who won a partial victory at the U.S. Supreme Court in 2018 for refusing to make a wedding cake for a same-sex couple violated the state’s anti-discrimination law by refusing to make a birthday cake for a transgender woman, a state judge has ruled. In Tuesday’s ruling, Denver District Judge A. Bruce Jones said Autumn Scardina was denied a cake that was blue on the outside and pink on the inside to celebrate her gender transition on her birthday because of her transgender status in violation of the law. While Jack Phillips said he could not make the...

Jack Phillips, a Colorado baker whose decision not to bake cakes for same-sex weddings ended up taking him before the US Supreme Court, has told his story in a book about his profession, his Christian faith, and his belief that religious freedom benefits everyone. “My canvas is a cake. I hope to create messages that help people celebrate different events,” he said, explaining that he and his wife discussed their design standards in light of their Christian faith at the very beginning of the cakeshop. “In our case, we drew our lines in the sand way back before we opened...

A Christian baker in Colorado who has been at the center of a yearslong debate after he declined to make a cake for a same-sex wedding has revealed the intense harassment and “horrific” response he and his business faced amid the fallout. “The emails [and] the phone calls were sometimes horrific,” Masterpiece Cakeshop owner Jack Phillips recently told the “Edifi With Billy Hallowell” podcast of the events that followed his July 2012 cake refusal. “You’d just hear profanity.” Phillips, who shares his story in the new book, The Cost of My Faith, said he had to protect his staff and...

Editor's Note:This is an exclusive excerpt adapted from "The Cost of My Faith: How a Decision in My Cake Shop Took Me to the Supreme Court" by Jack Phillips, releasing May 25, 2021 (Salem Books). The gavel came down. A door opened behind the bench, the red curtains were swept aside, and the nine justices filed into the room, taking their seats with barely a glance toward the waiting audience. The justices sit in order of seniority: Chief Justice John Roberts at the center, the longest-serving justice to his right, the second-longest serving to his left, and back and forth,...

When Jack Phillips opened Masterpiece Cakeshop in 1993, he never envisioned that he would become a household name defending religious freedom against an increasingly expansive vision of LGBT rights. Yet the Christian baker has found himself, for the third time, at the center of a lawsuit over his refusal to create custom cakes that would send messages that he says are antithetical to his religious beliefs. In 2018, Phillips partially won a case before the Supreme Court over his refusal to make a custom wedding cake for a same-sex couple. The high court ruled that the Colorado Civil Rights Commission...

In 2018, Colorado baker Jack Phillips, a devout Christian, won a victory in the Supreme Court over a case in which he refused to create a wedding cake for a same-sex couple citing his deeply held religious beliefs. On Monday, Phillips went on trial again, this time because a transgender activist wanted him to make a birthday cake and he refused.In the Masterpiece Cakeshop case of 2018, the Supreme Court ruled that the Colorado Civil Rights Commission evinced anti-religious bias for targeting Phillips for refusing to make a same-sex wedding cake. The Court did not rule whether a business could...

Today’s case in point is the bizarre incident involving a self-proclaimed “future college student,” this person’s Twitter account consisting of two followers when the complaint was tweeted (it’s up to 11 followers as of this writing), a 2019 segment from a Candace Owens show on which Michael Knowles appeared, and Harry’s Razors. The future college student apparently took some time to find a video clip it deemed offensive, then looked for the companies that only later advertised on one of the participants’ shows, and then tweeted to Harry’s Razors about the 2019 video’s supposed offense. Avi Das notified Harry's Razors:...

What do you do in the United States of America when a local business can’t or won’t provide a product or service you’ve requested? Speaking only for myself, I walk out the door and spend my money somewhere else. (Or at least I did, back when businesses had doors you could walk in and out of.) I vote with my wallet. If they don’t want my business, fine. That’s capitalism, and it’s been working pretty well for the last few centuries.Or at least that’s the way it used to work. But in the 21st century, that’s not enough. These days,...

According to the Equality Act, religious nurses, doctors, and hospitals unwilling to kill an unborn child or perform a sex-change surgery could be legally discriminating“Have you been following this ‘Equality Act?'” a Catholic priest I know asked me as I passed him on the icy sidewalk early Sunday afternoon. “A bit,” I answered. “You can be sure anything that comes out of D.C. does the opposite of its name.” “Check it out today,” he replied. “It could pass as early as this week, and it’s very, very troubling.” The two of us went our ways, carefully navigating the icy bricks...

Denver Newsroom, Feb 20, 2021 / 02:39 am MT (CNA).- Ahead of a significant Supreme Court case that could determine whether Catholic adoption agencies can stay open in the U.S., a religious freedom attorney has criticized an article arguing against religious freedom protections. “To the extent that this article proves anything, it’s that all creative professionals feel freer to exercise their constitutional rights, which is a good thing for every American,” Jake Warner, legal counsel with Alliance Defending Freedom, said Feb. 17. Warner was responding to a Feb. 6 article in The Atlantic by law professor Netta Barak-Corren. The article...

Nadia Bolz-Weber is ordained in the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA), a fast declining liberal Mainline Protestant denomination. Heavily tattooed and often obscene, she’s different from typical Mainline clerics. Formerly pastor of a small Denver church she founded, she’s a fairly popular writer and speaker. Wikipedia calls her a “public theologian.” Ostensibly her vulgarity makes her more authentic. Perhaps she was being authentic when she recently tweeted to her 93,000 followers a pic of her middle finger aimed at a metro Denver bakery, declaring: “My 12-step program is next door to Masterpiece Cake Shop (of anti-gay fame) so as...

Liberals’ outrage at the failure of the Supreme Court to excoriate Christian bakery owner Jack Phillips last year for declining a request to create a wedding cake for a gay couple was palpable. Equally palpable was their enthusiastic support for Cracker Barrel’s decision earlier this month to refuse service to a man who said LGBTQ people should be put on trial and executed if convicted.That is a problem. Here’s why.If Jack Phillips is in the wrong for refusing to serve certain customers because doing would violate his beliefs, then Cracker Barrel is in the wrong for doing the same thing.If...

Christian baker Jack Phillips of Colorado is facing a third lawsuit over his refusal on religious grounds to make certain cakes, the latest legal battle for the Masterpiece Cakeshop owner. Transgender woman Autumn Scardina filed a second lawsuit against Phillips last Wednesday in District Court for the city and county of Denver, Colorado. In the new lawsuit, Scardina claimed that Phillips violated Colorado’s Anti-Discrimination Act and Consumer Protection Act by refusing to bake what the plaintiff labeled a “birthday cake.” The “birthday cake” as described in the lawsuit, which was to be blue on the outside and pink on the...

The owner of Masterpiece Cakeshop -- which won a case before the U.S. Supreme Court recently -- was sued for a third time this week. Jack Phillips, the Lakewood, Colorado bakery owner who has refused to bake cakes that violate his Christian faith, is being sued again by Autumn Scardina, a transgender woman, for refusing to bake a gender transition cake. Scardina claims it is textbook LGBT discrimination. ..." He has insisted he doesn't want to do something that goes against his faith. He said the cases against him have directly affected his family and business and he's faced death...

Lakewood baker Jack Phillips is again facing legal action for declining to bake a cake for an LGBTQ customer. There’s just one big difference this time: the state of Colorado isn’t involved. Attorneys for Autumn Scardina, a transgender woman, filed a complaint against Phillips in state court Wednesday. In 2017, Scardina ordered a cake from Phillips to celebrate her birthday and gender transition. Phillips declined, citing his Christian beliefs and Scardina filed a complaint with Colorado’s Civil Rights Commission. In March, Attorney General Phil Weiser dropped the case filed on Scardina’s behalf. In exchange, Phillip’s attorneys agreed to end their...

Christian baker Jack Phillips of Colorado is facing a third lawsuit over his refusal on religious grounds to make certain cakes, the latest legal battle for the Masterpiece Cakeshop owner. Transgender woman Autumn Scardina filed a second lawsuit against Phillips last Wednesday in District Court for the city and county of Denver, Colorado. In the new lawsuit, Scardina claimed that Phillips violated Colorado’s Anti-Discrimination Act and Consumer Protection Act by refusing to bake what the plaintiff labeled a “birthday cake.” The “birthday cake” as described in the lawsuit, which was to be blue on the outside and pink on the...