RIGHT SPEAK: Colorado Defies the Supreme Court, Renews Persecution of a Christian Baker

Rick Wilking/Reuters

The state finds ‘probable cause’ that Jack Phillips violated the civil rights of someone who has been persistently trolling him with orders for provocative cakes.

Even after a 7–2 Supreme Court decision protecting Colorado custom baker Jack Phillips from overt religious discrimination, the state is doubling down. It’s participating in and empowering a grotesque campaign of discrimination and harassment that should shock the conscience of sensible Americans.

Phillips, you’ll recall, is the owner of Masterpiece Cakeshop, the bakery at the epicenter of one of the most contentious cases of the Supreme Court’s last term. Phillips had refused to design a custom cake to celebrate a gay wedding, and a clear majority of SCOTUS ruled that the Colorado Civil Rights Commission violated his right to free exercise of religion by demonstrating overt religious animus against him. Commissioners not only denigrated the sincerity of his religious-liberty argument, they applied overt double standards (by allowing bakers to refuse to create ant-gay messages) that were clearly discriminatory.

So Jack won. Colorado lost. But Jack’s ordeal, it turns out, was far from over. By standing up for his First Amendment freedoms, Phillips put a target on his back, and bad-faith, malicious actors aimed and fired.