The Colorado Supreme Court on Tuesday dismissed on procedural grounds a lawsuit against a Christian baker who refused to bake a cake for a transgender woman. The justices declined to consider the free speech issue that brought national attention to the case.
Baker Jack Phillips was sued by attorney Autumn Scardina in 2017 after his Denver-area bakery refused to make a pink cake with blue frosting to celebrate his gender transition. A lawsuit was filed by.
In a 6-3 majority opinion, the justices said Ms. Scardina had not exhausted her options to seek relief in another court before filing suit.
“We express no view as to the validity of these claims,” Justice Melissa Hart wrote for the majority.
Ms. Phillips' lawyer, Jake Warner, of the Arizona-based Alliance for Defending Freedom, argued in the high court that the baker's actions were protected free speech and that Ms. Scardina argued that whatever he was going to do with the cake was important to his rights.
Warner said Tuesday that his client has been pursued and ridiculed for years by those who oppose him.
“Enough is enough,” Warner said. “Jack has been dragged through the courts for over a decade. It's time to leave him alone.”
Scardina's lawyer, John McHugh, expressed disappointment and said he was evaluating his remaining legal options.
“The Colorado Supreme Court decided to circumvent the merits of this issue by inventing arguments that neither party raised,” McHugh said.
The minority justices condemned the ruling, saying it gave Phillips a “procedural pass.” They noted that all fact-finders and judicial officers who heard the case concluded that the bakery's actions violated Colorado's anti-discrimination law.
Opponents also said they feared Phillips would interpret the ruling as vindication.
But Hart wrote that nothing in the ruling changes protections under anti-discrimination laws.
The case was one of several in Colorado that challenged the civil and First Amendment rights of LGBTQ+ people. In 2018, Phillips won a partial victory in the U.S. Supreme Court for refusing to bake a cake for a same-sex couple's wedding.
The lawsuit, which was dismissed Tuesday, attracted the attention of numerous attorney generals from Republican-led states who filed a joint brief in support of Phillips.
Mr. Scardina's side was backed by advocacy groups who warned that Colorado's anti-discrimination laws would be rolled back if violations of the First Amendment were found.
Scardina tried to order the cake on the same day the U.S. Supreme Court announced it would hear Phillips' appeal in the wedding cake case. Scardina said she wanted to dispute Phillips' claim to serve LGBTQ+ customers and denied that she was trying to get the cake because of the lawsuit.
Before filing her lawsuit, Scardina first filed complaints against Phillips with the state and the Colorado Civil Rights Commission, which found that Phillips may have discriminated against her.
In March 2019, attorneys for the state and Phillips agreed to dismiss both cases under a settlement that did not involve Scardina. She pursued her own lawsuit against Phillips and Masterpiece Cake Shop.
That's when the case took a wrong turn, the judges said in Tuesday's ruling. Scardina should have challenged the state's settlement with Phillips directly in the state Court of Appeals, he said.
Instead, a state judge ruled in 2021 that Phillips violated the state's anti-discrimination law by refusing to bake a cake for Scardina. The judge said the case was about refusing to sell a product, not forcing speech.
The Colorado Court of Appeals sided with Scardina, ruling that the pink and blue cake, which Scardina did not request to be written on, was not speech protected by the First Amendment.
