Many Americans need to be better trained on the First Amendment. The government cannot compel “speech!” This was never about discrimination as Jack Philips was very willing to serve LGBTQ people his “off the shelf” menu. He refused to make a custom message.
Jack Phillips has been targeted for refusing to make cakes celebrating same-sex marriage and transgender transitions. A Christian cake baker has finally defeated legal harassment from the LGBTQ+ movement after fighting in court for more than a decade. Jack Phillips was sued in 2012 for refusing to create a cake for a same-sex couple at his Masterpiece Cakeshop in Colorado and then later sued for refusing to create a cake celebrating a transgender transition. Attorneys for the Alliance Defending Freedom have defended Phillips for 12 years. ‘Enough is enough. Jack has been dragged through courts for over a decade. It’s time to leave him alone.’ On Tuesday the Colorado Supreme Court dismissed the second lawsuit after saying that the attorney who filed the lawsuit did not follow the proper process to do so. Phillips won the first lawsuit in 2018 after a court found that officials acted with hostility against his faith.
Neither of the legal victories established Phillips’ constitutional right to free speech as a basis for dismissal. “Enough is enough. Jack has been dragged through courts for over a decade. It’s time to leave him alone,” said Jake Warner, the senior counsel for ADF. “Free speech is for everyone,” he added. “In this case, an attorney demanded that Jack create a custom cake that would celebrate and symbolize a transition from male to female. Because that cake admittedly expresses a message, and because Jack cannot express that message for anyone, the government cannot punish Jack for declining to express it. The First Amendment protects that decision.” The ADF said that the attorney who sued Phillips had also asked him to decorate a cake with the image of Satan smoking marijuana in an attempt to “correct the errors” of Phillips’ thinking. “Phillips serves people from all backgrounds. Like many artists, he decides to create custom cakes based on what they will express, not who requests them,” read a statement from ADF.
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