https://www.oregonlive.com/business/2022/01/court-affirms-ruling-against-bakery-that-refused-to-sell-same-sex-wedding-cake-but-tells-state-to-reconsider-fine.html

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.”