This Feb. 5, 2013, file photo, shows exterior of the now closed Sweet Cakes by Melissa in Gresham.Everton Bailey Jr./Staff
The Oregon Court of Appeals for a second time Wednesday upheld a ruling by the state civil rights division that found that a Gresham bakery illegally discriminated against a same-sex couple by refusing to sell them a wedding cake in 2013.
However, the court found that the Oregon Bureau of Labor and Industries did not exhibit religious neutrality in ordering Sweet Cakes by Melissa to pay $135,000 in noneconomic damages for illegal discrimination. The court sent the case back to the civil rights division to reassess the damages.
The long-running case began nine years ago, when Laurel and Rachel Bowman-Cryer filed a complaint against Sweet Cakes by Melissa owners Aaron and Melissa Klein, alleging the bakery refused to bake them a wedding cake upon learning the cake would be for a same-sex couple.
The Bureau of Labor and Industries found in their investigation that the bakery had violated the couple’s civil rights. The Kleins appealed that decision, contending that baking a cake for a same-sex wedding went against their Christian beliefs.
Oregon law bans discrimination against gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender people in jobs and in places that serve the public, such as bakeries.
The Oregon Court of Appeals originally affirmed the civil right division’s ruling in 2015, but the U.S. Supreme Court vacated the ruling four years later. It directed the state appellate court to review its decision in the context of the Supreme Court’s 2018 ruling in a similar case in Colorado.
In Masterpiece Cakeshop v. Colorado Civil Rights Commission, the Supreme Court ruled on narrow grounds in favor of a baker who refused to sell a wedding cake to a gay couple, finding that a commissioner was openly hostile to religion in violation of the First Amendment’s requirement for governmental religious neutrality.
In making its ruling Wednesday, the Oregon Court of Appeals considered the Supreme Court’s decision in the Colorado case and a separate ruling from 2021 where the Supreme Court ruled in favor of a Catholic foster care agency who said the city of Philadelphia violated its rights by refusing to work with the agency because it didn’t place foster children with same-sex couples.
In its ruling Wednesday, the Oregon Court of Appeals found the state civil right division ordered Sweet Cakes by Melissa to pay significant damages partly based on a statement Aaron Klein made to Cheryl McPherson, the mother of Rachel Bowman-Cryer, in which he quoted a biblical verse. The court found the state civil rights division awarded the damages despite finding that Klein’s statement had been incorrectly relayed by McPherson to the couple.
But the court found Wednesday that the Supreme Court’s rulings didn’t change its interpretation of whether Sweet Cakes by Melissa had violated the state’s nondiscrimination statutes.
“We adhere to our prior decision upholding BOLI’s determinations that Aaron unlawfully discriminated against the Bowman-Cryers based on sexual orientation, in violation of ORS 659A.403,” the court wrote, “and concluding that neither the state constitution nor the federal constitution precludes the enforcement of the statute against Aaron, even though the enforcement of the statute burdens Aaron’s practice of his faith.”
Court affirms ruling against bakery that refused to sell same-sex wedding cake but tells state to reconsider damages
Scottie's Playtime 
Wingnut welfare: they got a suger-daddy, no way they could stay in business based on the quality of their cakes.
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Hello Ten Bears. A lot of these lawsuits against anti-discrimination rules are funded by Christian groups like the Liberty Council that fund raises off them even after they lose, which they normally do. They have a fake company started that has never done business with the public but say they are or plan to, they then have the business owner claim their religious liberty is infringed when they are forced not to discriminate against the LGBTQ+ public. But this is before anyone asks them to do so. It is preemptive. It is a cheap way to challenge anti-discrimination laws / rules and fundraising at the same time.
As we have recently seen it is just their opening gambit as the adoption case shows. They got permission from SCOTUS to force a state to pay them taxpayer money and let them discriminate against the gays. Now one adoption agency took it to the next level, discriminating against a Jewish couple. Soon they will get taxpayer money, demand it, and demand the right to serve only white Christian couples like their bigoted god demands.
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That this type of bigotry makes it to the courts astounds me.
First Amendment:
“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.”
Certain interpretations of the First Amendment:
“The First Amendment guarantees freedoms concerning religion, expression, assembly, and the right to petition. It forbids Congress from both promoting one religion over others and also restricting an individual’s religious practices. It guarantees freedom of expression by prohibiting Congress from restricting the press or the rights of individuals to speak freely. It also guarantees the right of citizens to assemble peaceably and to petition their government.
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Hello Nan. Some political and religious figures are trying to argue that only the Christian religion has rights in the US. They claim the founding fathers were Christians who wanted the nation to honor their god and were not thinking of any other religions. They are pushing this to the point that the real history has become either forgotten or obscured so that few realize they are wrong. We have a SCOTUS who have now given the Christian religion priority over civil rights and other religions. The court denied a Muslim prisoner on death row the right to have his Iman present during his execution but stopped the execution of a Christian man because the state was not going to let his chaplain be present. They rules that churches can be given taxpayer money and that religious organizations cannot be denied money from state contracts even if they discriminate / violate state discrimination laws. Justice Gorsuch has said the worst kind of discrimination is discrimination against religion, not religions that discriminate. There are a majority of diehard Catholic religious people on the SCOTUS now who believe it is their duty to their god to rule as he wants, not as the constitution states. It is very scary to me. There are several cases now before the court like the religious flag over the Boston capital case, and I think they will erode a lot of our secular nature of our country. If you don’t know the case, Boston lets non-religious groups with certain qualification fly their flags over the capital for a time. They let the LGBTQ+ fly the pride flag over the capital. But they turned down the right wing religious group from doing it and then the liberty council sued. They have lost every court case on it so far, but it looks like the SCOTUS is going to over turn the lower courts and rule for the religious groups.
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I wrote a post on the Boston situation. 🙂 It will be “interesting” to see what happens.
From my perspective, the law school takes some liberties with their “interpretation” of the First Amendment. Technically, what they wrote is probably correct, but it seems to me they are slanting it towards the “common” religion of the U.S. Do you see this too?
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Do you mean the second one you listed. Yes, it is too broad. The government has always held reasonable restrictions on any right is acceptable as long as it doesn’t remove the exercise of the main right. For example native tribes in prisons couldn’t use peyote in their ceremonies. People have free speech but can not incite a riot or a crime. People have the right to protest but we have seen limits and needs for permits from the government for those protests. I think what a lot of people have forgotten is we need both reasonable rules and people to follow them in order to have a civil society worth living in. One of the sites I was on today was arguing for vigilante justice and for people to just use violence when they felt the need. How dare the government try to order me around and tell me what do to is popular any time a cartoon is about masks or vaccines. They forget the government regulates everything from driving to smoking in restaurants and public buildings. These people want rights with no responsibility, they want the benefits without joining creating them. Anyway what really worries me is that according to the legal podcast I listen to Opening Arguments the recent SCOTUS decision on the vaccine mandates using Osha denies the reality of the law and the actual written words in the law and just makes up things to reach the goal they wanted, which was to deny the mandate by denying a department the authority to issue regulations on the say so of congress.
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I fear that “vigilante justice” is going to be the standard in the not-too-distant future.
I’m thankful to have been born when I was as I’ve gotten to experience a very wide range of advancements in so many areas. But then it comes to politics? I have to say I won’t be at all upset about leaving behind all the stuff that’s going on now and what seems to be in the future as well.
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