LAKEWOOD, Colorado (LifeSiteNews) — The Colorado Supreme Court this week agreed to take on the latest case involving Jack Phillips, a Christian baker who has endured roughly 10 years of political persecution beginning with his 2012 refusal to bake a cake to celebrate the “wedding” of a homosexual couple.
The state’s highest court on Tuesday agreed to hear the newest case in which Phillips, who runs the Masterpiece Cakeshop in a suburb of Denver, is accused of violating the law by refusing to bake a pink and blue cake to celebrate the alleged “gender transition” of a male attorney who claims to be a woman.
The Associated Press reported that the plaintiff, Charlie “Autumn” Scardina, filed a lawsuit against Phillips after he refused to bake the cake.
As LifeSiteNews has reported, Phillips’ legal battles have been ongoing for more than a decade after a homosexual couple in 2012 ordered a cake from Masterpiece Cakeshop for their “wedding.” Phillips, a Christian, refused on the grounds that fulfilling the order would go against his belief that marriage is between one man and one woman.
After years of legal battles, the U.S. Supreme Court handed down a 7-2 ruling in a June 2018 finding that the state of Colorado had discriminated against Phillips for attempting to force him to bake the “wedding” cake.
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Phillips has explained that he would not refuse service to individuals who identify as LGBT, but that he does refuse to make products that would “communicate a message that contradicts my deepest religious convictions.”
Just weeks after the victory at the Supreme Court in August 2018, Phillips was dragged back into court after refusing to bake the “transgender” celebration cake for Scardina.
The gender-confused attorney said he “brought the lawsuit to ‘challenge the veracity’ of Phillips’ statements that he would serve LGBTQ customers.” His lawyer claims that the transgender cake order wasn’t intended to be a “setup” just to sue, the AP reported.
Days after Scardina filed the lawsuit, the Colorado Civil Rights Division (CCRD) argued there was probable cause to conclude that the Christian baker had denied the gender-confused attorney “equal enjoyment of a place of public accommodation” by refusing to bake the cake, violating the law.
Religious liberty nonprofit Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF) responded by filing a federal lawsuit against then-Democrat Gov. John Hickenlooper and the state civil rights commission, LifeSiteNews previously reported.
In March 2019, the state Attorney General’s office announced that it and Phillips’ attorneys had “mutually agreed to end their ongoing state and federal court litigation.”
Scardina wasn’t barred from filing a separate civil suit, however, an option he later took.
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In 2021, Denver District Judge A. Bruce Jones ruled that Phillips had violated the state’s anti-discrimination law and that his refusal to bake the blue and pink cake was “inextricably intertwined” with a denial of Scardina’s “gender identity.”
And the prosecution against Phillips didn’t end there.
In January of this year, a state appeals court also ruled against Phillips, declaring that “the act of baking a pink cake with blue frosting does not constitute protected speech under the First Amendment,” and that the “prohibition against discrimination based on a person’s transgender status does not violate a proprietor’s right to freely exercise or express their religion.”
Now, Colorado’s highest court has agreed to take up the case.
The escalation of the matter to the state judiciary comes just months after the U.S. Supreme Court handed down a ruling in June upholding the religious liberty rights of a graphic designer who refused to create websites to advertise the unions of homosexual “couples.”
As LifeSiteNews noted at the time, observers were hopeful that the June ruling would provide Phillips and other Christian small business owners long-awaited relief.