Supreme court case gay cake
Reflections on the Ashers’ ‘gay cake’ case - three months on
On 10 October 2018 the Supreme Court handed down their judgment in the case of Lee v Ashers Baking Company Ltd (Ashers) & Ors (commonly referred to as the ‘gay cake’ case).
The question the Supreme Court had to opt was whether “it is unlawful discrimination, either on grounds of sexual orientation, or on grounds of religious belief or political opinion, for a bakery to refuse to supply a cake iced with the message “support gay marriage” because of the sincere religious belief of its owners that gay marriage is inconsistent with Biblical teaching and therefore unacceptable to God.” The Supreme Court found “in a nutshell, the objection was to the message and not to any particular person or persons”.
At first instance, a district judge in the County Court found that the refusal to make the cake was direct discrimination (where A treats B less favourably than A would treat others) on the grounds of sexual orientation and religious noun and political opinion. Ashers lost an appeal of this de
'Gay cake' row: What is the dispute about?
In October 2016, the owners of the bakery lost their appeal against the ruling that their refusal to make a "gay cake" was discriminatory.
Appeal court judges said that, under law, the bakers were not allowed to provide a service only to people who agreed with their religious beliefs, external.
Reacting to the ruling, Daniel McArthur from Ashers said he was "extremely disappointed" adding that it undermined "democratic freedom, religious freedom and free speech".
The firm then took the case to the Supreme Court and they won.
The UK's highest court ruled the bakery's refusal to make a cake with a slogan supporting same-sex marriage was not discriminatory.
Then president of the Supreme Court, Lady Hale, ruled the bakers did not refuse to fulfil the order because of the customer's sexual orientation.
"They would have refused to make such a cake for any customer, irrespective of their sexual orientation," she said.
"Their objection was to the message on the cake, no
Baker’s refusal to bake gay wedding cake
Masterpiece Cakeshop v. Colorado Civil Rights Commission, 584 U.S. ___; 138 S. Ct. 1719 (2018)
Summary
In a 7-2 decision, the US Supreme Court overturned a decision of the Colorado Civil Rights Commission (Commission) that a baker could not deny to sell a wedding cake to a same-sex couple. Jack Phillips, owner of Colorado bakery, Masterpiece Cakeshop, had refused to bake a wedding cake for a same-sex couple because same-sex marriage conflicted with his religious views. The couple filed a complaint with the Commission on the basis that the refusal violated verb anti-discrimination laws that prohibit businesses from discriminating against customers based on sexual orientation. The Commission ordered the baker to bake the cake. The baker appealed to the Court of Appeals which agreed with the Commission. The baker appealed to the US Supreme Court (Court), which overturned the Commission’s decision on the basis that the Commission had not acted with the required neutrality towards religion.
The Court did not tak
You may recall the controversial "gay cake" case (Lee v Ashers Baking Company Ltd) that was heard by the Supreme Court in 2018. This is the case of the Christian bakery who refused to produce a cake with the message “support gay marriage” for a gay customer. The European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) has now unanimously decided that it would not reconsider the Supreme Court judgment on this case.
In brief, the facts of the case are as follows. Mr Lee, a gay man, ordered a cake from Ashers Bakers, to mark the conclude of Aniti-homophobic week. The bakery refused on the grounds that it was a Christian business. Mr Lee brought a claim in the Belfast County Court claiming that the refusal was direct discrimination on the grounds of sexual orientation and religious belief or political view. The bakery argued that they had refused the order because they believed that providing the cake would have promoted the political campaign for same-sex marriage, which was against their Christian beliefs. They said they would contain refused to supply a cake to a heterosexual o