Wedding Cakes And Cell Phone Towers Await Justices In December Sitting

REUTERS/Jonathan Ernst/File Photo

The U.S. Supreme Court’s December sitting will begin Monday, a two week stretch of the 2017 term that features momentous cases concerning the First Amendment and religious liberty and a challenge to the constitutionality of the warrantless seizure of cell tower data that could recast Fourth Amendment law.

The December sitting, which begins Nov. 27 and concludes Dec. 6, is the high water mark of a term burgeoning with important cases.

The marquee case of the sitting, Masterpiece Cakeshop v. Colorado Civil Rights Commission, concerns a Christian baker in Colorado who declined to create a wedding cake with a pro-LGBT message for a gay couple planning their nuptials. The baker, Jack Phillips, is an Evangelical Christian who believes participation in a same-sex wedding violates his deeply-held religious beliefs. Phillips argues his custom cakes are a form of creative expression, and that the state is coercing him into creating expression with which he disagrees, in violation of the First Amendment. The Colorado Civil Rights Commission assessed a number of penalties against Phillips after he refused to produce the cake.

Read the rest from Kevin Daly HERE.

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