Colorado State Pressures Cake Artist Jack Phillips Again

After cake artist Jack Phillips gained a Supreme Court victory earlier this year, succeeding in the fight for his right to bake cakes based on his religious beliefs—and to not celebrate a same-sex marriage message—he is now under fire again. Attorneys representing the baker and his cake shop filed a new federal lawsuit late Tuesday against Colorado officials newly pressuring him to bake a cake celebrating the gender transition of a person from male to female.

On June 26, 2017, the same day that the Supreme Court agreed to take up Masterpiece Cakeshop v. Colorado Civil Rights Commission, an attorney asked Phillips to create a cake designed pink on the inside and blue on the outside, which the attorney said was to celebrate a gender transition from male to female.

Phillips declined the request because the custom cake would have expressed messages about sex and gender identity that conflict with his religious beliefs. Less than a month after the Supreme Court ruled for Phillips in his first case, Colorado state surprised him by finding probable cause to believe that Colorado law requires him to create the requested gender-transition cake.

Alliance Defending Freedom attorneys representing Phillips maintain in a recent press statement that, "although the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in June that Colorado cannot treat cake artist Jack Phillips differently than others, state officials have continued to do just that in response to a more recent complaint filed against him."