A Colorado baker has been fined after he refused to make a birthday cake for a transgender woman three years ago.
Jack Phillips, owner of Masterpiece Cakeshop, won a partial victory at the U.S. Supreme Court for refusing to make a wedding cake for a same-sex couple.
In 2012, he refused to bake the wedding cake citing his Christian beliefs. The couple sued, and the case went all the way to the Supreme Court, which ruled narrowly in his favor, as per the Independent newspaper.
On the same day in 2017 that the U.S. Supreme Court announced it would hear Phillips’ appeal in the wedding cake case, Autumn Scardina was denied a cake by Phillips that was blue on the outside and pink on the inside to celebrate her gender transition.
Scardina said she wanted to “challenge the veracity” of Phillips’ statements that he would serve LGBT customers, as per Yahoo news.
In Tuesday’s ruling, Denver District Judge A. Bruce Jones said Phillips’ refusal to make Scardina the cake because of her transgender status was in violation of the law. While the Lakewood baker said he could not make the cake because of its message, Jones said the case was about a refusal to sell a product, not compelled speech.
As per Yahoo News Judge Jones added: “The anti-discrimination laws are intended to ensure that members of our society who have historically been treated unfairly, who have been deprived of even the every-day right to access businesses to buy products, are no longer treated as ‘others,'” Jones wrote.
Phillips was fined $500 for violating Colorado’s Anti-Discrimination Act.
The group representing Phillips, Alliance Defending Freedom, said it would appeal the ruling.
“Radical activists and government officials are targeting artists like Jack because they won’t promote messages on marriage and sexuality that violate their core convictions,” the group’s general counsel, Kristen Waggoner, said in a statement.
John McHugh, One of Scardina’s attorneys, said the case is about how LGBT people are treated and this was not just an isolated case.
“This is about a business that is open to the public that simply says to an entire class of people in the community that your identity, who you are, is something that is objectional,” he added.
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