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Supreme Court Grants Certiorari in Oregon Wedding Cake Case, but Remands for “Further Consideration” in Light of Masterpiece Cakeshop

Posted on: June 17th, 2019 by Art Leonard No Comments

The U.S. Supreme Court granted a petition for a writ of certiorari in Klein v. Oregon Bureau of Labor and Industries, No. 18-547, on June 17, but at the same time vacated the Oregon Court of Appeals decision in the case, 289 Or. App. 507 (Dec. 28, 2017), and remanded the case to that court for “further consideration” in light of the Court’s decision last year in Masterpiece Cakeshop v. Colorado Civil Rights Commission, 138 S. Ct. 1719 (2018).  The Court did not issue any explanation for its ruling, beyond the direction of “further consideration” specifying Masterpiece Cakeshop as the ground for such consideration.

Both cases involved the question whether a baker who refuses to make a wedding cake for a same-sex couple has a federal constitutional defense to a discrimination charge in the state administrative and judicial fora.  In both Oregon and Colorado, state law forbids discrimination because of sexual orientation in places of public accommodation, and businesses selling wedding cakes are definitely public accommodations under both laws.  Without ruling directly on the question presented in Masterpiece, the Supreme Court last year vacated the Colorado Court of Appeals and Colorado Commission rulings based on the Court’s conclusion that the Commission forum was “hostile to religion” as evidenced by statements by two of the Commissioners and “inconsistent” action on a religious discrimination charge by a provocateur who sought unsuccessfully to order anti-gay cakes from other bakers.

It takes at least four votes on the Supreme Court to grant a writ of certiorari, but it takes at least five votes to vacate and remand a lower court ruling.  According to its usual practice, the Court did not specify how many justices voted for the cert grant or the “vacate and remand” order.

The issue on remand for the Oregon Court of Appeals appears to be whether some statements made by Brad Avakian, Commissioner of the Oregon Bureau of Labor and Industry (BOLI), evinced the kind of hostility to religion that the Supreme Court identified as problematic in the Masterpiece case.

When Melissa Klein, proprietor of Sweetcakes by Melissa, rejected a wedding cake order from Rachel and Lauren Bowman-Cryer on religious grounds, the women filed complaints with the Oregon Department of Justice and the Bureau of Labor and Industries. The media found the case newsworthy, resulting in interviews with Melissa Klein and her husband in which they sought to justify their action on religious grounds.  Commissioner Avakian reacted to the ensuing controversy by posting a statement to his Facebook page and speaking with The Oregonian, a wide-read newspaper in the state.

Avakian’s Facebook post included a link to a television station’s news story about the refusal of service and a statement: “Everyone has a right to their religious beliefs, but that doesn’t mean they can disobey laws that are already in place.  Having one set of rules for everybody ensures that people are treated fairly as they go about their daily lives.”  The Oregonian subsequently quoted Avakian as saying that “everyone is entitled to their own beliefs, but that doesn’t mean that folks have the right to discriminate.”

Under BOLI’s procedures, an administrative law judge (ALJ) holds a hearing and issues a “proposed final order,” to which the parties can file “exceptions” as an appeal to the Commissioner.  Before the hearing in this case, the Kleins moved to disqualify Commissioner Avakian from taking any role in the case, arguing that his public statements had prejudged the case so he was not neutral.  The ALJ denied the motion to disqualify and went on to find that the Kleins had violated the statute by denying services to the couple “on account of” their sexual orientation, as prohibited by the statute.  The ALJ rejected the Kleins argument that they had not discriminated because of the women’s sexual orientation, or that their actions were protected by the First Amendment free speech and free exercise of religion provisions.  But the ALJ also rejected BOLI’s argument that statements made by Mr. Klein during interviews were communicating a future intent to discriminate, which would itself violate a specific prohibition in the statute. Rather, the ALJ ruled, they were an account of the reasons for their denial of services in this case.  The ALJ ordered damages to the couple totaling $135,000, mainly for emotional suffering and having to put up with the media attention.

The Kleins and BOLI both filed exceptions to the ALJ’s proposed order. Commissioner Avakian affirmed the ALJ’s ruling on discrimination, but disagreed with the ruling on statement of future intent to discriminate.  Avakian concluded that the record supported the opposite finding, that the interviews and a sign taped to the bakery’s window communicated intent to discriminate on the same basis in the future, but he approved the ALJ’s proposed damage award without adding anything for this additional violation.  The Kleins then petitioned for judicial review.

The Oregon Court of Appeals affirmed the ALJ’s decision on discrimination, but rejected Commissioner Avakian’s reversal of the ALJ’s ruling on communicating an intention to discriminate in the future.  The court also rejected the Kleins’ argument on appeal that Avakian should have been disqualified from ruling on the case because of his Facebook and Oregonian interview statements. As to another flashpoint in the case, the court deemed the amount of damages awarded appropriate, noting that the amount was in line with damages awarded in other similar cases.  The Kleins sought review in the Oregon Supreme Court, but were turned down without comment.

The Kleins’ petition for certiorari to the U.S. Supreme Court mentions the issue of Avakian’s statements and the ALJ and Oregon court’s rejections of disqualification, but it does not focus on that issue in its statement of questions presented, even though the petition was filed months after the Supreme Court’s ruling in Masterpiece Cakeshop made that a potentially viable alternative route to getting the agency’s decision overturned.  Counsel for the Kleins, instead, were focused on getting the Supreme Court to reconsider its 1990 ruling, Employment Division v. Smith, 494 U.S. 872, in which the Court abandoned its long-established free exercise clause jurisprudence, substituting a rule that people have to comply with neutral state laws of general application – such as most anti-discrimination laws – even though complying might burden their free exercise of religion.   Their second “question presented” asked the Court to overrule Smith, and their third “question presented” asked the Court to “reaffirm” a “hybrid rights doctrine” suggested in dicta in Smith, where there would be more stringent judicial review in cases where other constitutional rights in addition to free exercise of religion were implicated.

The Supreme Court’s decision to vacate the Oregon Court of Appeals decision for “further consideration” by the state court suggests that there are not enough votes on the Court to reconsider Smith as of now, but we can’t know how many votes short the proponents on the Court of reconsidering Smith might be.  Smith has long been a controversial precedent.  The decision’s cutback on protection for religious objectors led Congress to pass the Religious Freedom Restoration Act and many states to pass their own versions of that law.  But Smith has become a bulwark for vindicating the rights of same-sex couples to obtain wedding-related goods and services, as most courts confronted with the issue have concluded that such businesses do not have the right to deny them to same-sex couples.

The Kleins are represented by First Liberty Institute of Plano, Texas, Boyden Gray & Associates of Washington, D.C., and Oregon local counsel Herbert G. Grey.  Ten amicus briefs, all urging the Court to grant the petition for certiorari, were filed by conservative and religious litigation and policy groups, many extolling the case as a vehicle for overturning Employment Division v. Smith.  Lambda Legal represented Rachel and Laurel Bowman-Cryer with an amicus brief at the Oregon Court of Appeals.

Masterpiece Baker Phillips Wins a Round in New Lawsuit Against Colorado Civil Rights Officials

Posted on: January 9th, 2019 by Art Leonard No Comments

Masterpiece Cakeshop baker Jack Phillips is back in court again, this time suing officials of Colorado’s Civil Rights agency and the state’s attorney general and governor to try to block the Commission from continuing a case against him for refusing to make a custom-designed cake to celebrate a transgender attorney’s celebration of the anniversary of her transition. On February 4, Senior U.S. District Judge Wiley Y. Daniel largely rejected a motion by defendants to dismiss the case, although he narrowed its scope somewhat.

For those coming in late to this ongoing drama: Phillips and Masterpiece Cakeshop were found by the Commission and the Colorado Court of Appeals to have violated the state’s public accommodations law when he refused to make a wedding cake for a gay couple in 2012 because of his religious objection to same-sex marriage. The U.S. Supreme Court reversed those decisions in a 7-2 ruling last June 4, based on the Court’s conclusion that the state had not afforded Phillips a “neutral” forum to consider his 1st Amendment defense.

Part of the Court’s conclusion that the Commission was “hostile” to Phillips on religious grounds rested on the Commission’s treatment of a provocateur named William Jack. While the discrimination claim by a gay couple was pending before the Commission, Jack approached three Colorado bakeries that custom-decorate cakes, asking them to make cakes for him that “conveyed disapproval of same-sex marriage, along with religious text,” quoting here from Justice Anthony M. Kennedy’s opinion for the Supreme Court. All the bakers turned him down, stating that they “objected to those cakes’ messages and would not create them for anyone.” Jack filed discrimination charges against the bakeries, but after investigating his charges, the Colorado Civil Rights Division found no “probable cause” that the statute was violated, and the Commission affirmed that determination.

The Supreme Court seized upon the Commission’s response to Jack’s provocation, saying that the Commission’s hostility was evident in “the difference in treatment between Phillips’ case and the cases of other bakers who objected to a requested cake on the basis of conscience and prevailed before the Commission.” The Civil Rights Division ruled in Phillips’ case that “any message the requested wedding cake would carry would be attributed to the customer, not the baker,” while “the Division did not address this point in any of the other cases with respect to the cakes depicting anti-gay marriage symbolism.” Justice Kennedy also critically noted that “the Division found no violation of the Act in the other cases in part because each bakery was willing to sell other products to the prospective customers” but the “Commission dismissed Phillips’ willingness to sell birthday cakes, shower cakes, cookies and brownies, to gay and lesbian customers as irrelevant.”

The Supreme Court had announced its decision to grant Jack Phillips’ petition for review on June 26, 2017 – an announcement that received widespread media coverage and apparently prompted Autumn Scardia, a transgender attorney, to take a leaf from William Jack’s book. She phoned Masterpiece and inquired about getting a cake with a blue exterior and a pink interior to “celebrate her transition from male to female.” Scardina said she wanted the cake for a birthday party she was planning. It was only when she described the color scheme and the reason for it that Phillips turned down the order, stating that he would not make a cake celebrating a gender transition for “any customer, no matter the customer’s protected characteristics.” In his current lawsuit, he alleges that he “offered to create a different custom cake for Scardina or to sell her any of the pre-make items available for purchase.” But she declined to order anything else.

Scardina filed a discrimination charge with the Division. Several weeks after the Supreme Court ruled on the first Masterpiece Cakeshop case, the Division issued a probable cause determination against Phillips for violating the public accommodations law by refusing Scardina’s cake order. While noting the religious reasons cited by Phillips for specifically not making a cake designed to celebrate a gender transition, due to his religious belief that a person’s sex is “an immutable God-given reality,” the Commission nonetheless concluded that “the refusal to provide service to Complainant was based on her transgender status.”

On October 2, 2018, the Commission filed a formal complaint against Phillips based on the Division’s finding, and set the case for a hearing. Anticipating this move, Phillips filed a complaint in federal court on August 14, 2018, which the defendants promptly moved to dismiss. Phillips charges that the state is out to get him, characterizing its actions as “unconstitutional bullying.” After the defendants’ dismissal motion and the Commission’s formal complaint were filed, Phillips filed an amended complaint to take account of these developments. The Commission’s hearing. The hearing has not yet taken place.

Phillips claims that the defendants’ interpretation of the public accommodations law violates his First Amendment rights to free exercise of religion and freedom of speech. He also makes a Due Process vagueness claim against the statute, attacking it on several grounds, including a structural charge against the statutory criteria for the appointment of Commission members by the governor, which require, among other things, that several members of the Commission be representative of minority communities protected by the anti-discrimination law. He also asserted an equal protection claim, focused again on the differential treatment cited by the Supreme Court in noting the Commission’s refusal to prosecute the bakers who had turned down William Jack’s order for “anti-same-sex marriage cakes.”

Phillips sought injunctions against the state officials forbidding them from interpreting and enforcing the statute against him. He also sought a judicial declaration about the violation of his constitutional rights, and compensatory, punitive and nominal damages against the Civil Rights Division’s Director, Aubrey Elenis, and the seven members of the Commission.

In ruling on the motion to dismiss, Judge Daniel found that none of the “abstention doctrines” that the federal courts have developed to determine whether to allow federal lawsuits to interfere with state administrative proceedings should apply in this case, and that Phillips had standing to bring this lawsuit, not only because of the proceedings ongoing against him, but also because he wanted to post a policy statement on his business’s website about the basis on which they would refuse to make custom-cakes, but was inhibited from doing so because a section of the public accommodations law states that businesses cannot publish discriminatory policies.

However, Daniel did find that Director Elenis and the individual Civil Rights Commissioners enjoy absolute immunity from personal liability for damages, accepting their argument that they are acting as prosecutors and adjudicators. He wrote that it is “well-established that prosecutors are absolutely immune for activities which are intimately associated with the judicial process such as initiating and pursuing” a prosecution. He found that the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 10th Circuit, whose rulings are binding on the district court in Colorado, has “extended absolute immunity to state administrative or executive officials serving in adjudicative, judicial, or prosecutorial capacities.”

Furthermore, the judge found that Governor John Hickenlooper should be dismissed as a defendant, since he played no direct role in enforcing the public accommodations law, so suit against him in his official capacity was barred by the 11th Amendment. Just in time, it seems, since Hickenlooper’s term ended a few days after the court issued it January 4 decision, with Governor Jared Polis taking office on January 8. This decision means that Polis, the state’s (and nation’s) first out gay man to be elected a governor, did not become a defendant in this lawsuit immediately on taking office!

However, the court refused to dismiss the Attorney General, Cynthia Coffman, from the case, finding that the attorney general’s role of representing the Commission in court did make that office potentially subject to injunctive relief. Once again, however, the timing was fortuitous, since Coffman’s term has also ended, as Phil Weiser took office as attorney general on January 8, and the defense of this case will be carried on by his office.

Of course, Phillips is represented by Alliance Defending Freedom, the right-wing Christian litigation group that represented him in appealing the wedding cake decision to the Supreme Court. Not coincidentally, ADF also represents Harris Funeral Homes, seeking Supreme Court review of the 6th Circuit’s decision that Harris violated Title VII of the Civil Rights Act when it fired a transgender funeral director, as well as anonymous plaintiffs who are asking the Supreme Court to overturn the 3rd Circuit’s decision rejecting a constitutional challenge to the Boyertown, Pennsylvania, school district’s transgender-affirmative facilities access policy. One of the best ways to keep up with some major cases in LGBT-related litigation is to periodically visit ADF’s website.

California Judge Issues Unprecedented Ruling in Favor of Baker Who Declined to Make Wedding Cake for Same-Sex Couple

Posted on: February 8th, 2018 by Art Leonard No Comments

Breaking a consensus among courts that has developed over the past several years that people with religious or moral objections to same-sex weddings are not entitled to exempt their business from selling goods or services for such events, Kern County (California) Superior Court Judge David Lampe ruled on February 5, 2018, in Department of Fair Employment and Housing v. Miller, BCV-17-102855, that Cathy Miller, owner of Cathy’s Creations, Inc., doing business as Tastries Bakery in Bakersfield, California, is entitled to a First Amendment exemption from complying with California’s law that bans sexual orientation discrimination by businesses.  Judge Lampe is the first to rule in favor of a business in such a case.

Miller refused to make a wedding cake for Eileen and Mireya Rodriguez-Del Rio, who came to her bakery in August 2017 to plan for a celebration to take place in October.  They had selected a design of a cake in the display case, but since their celebration would not be until October, the transaction would be for Miller to prepare a cake specifically for their event.  “The couple did not want or request any written words or messages on the cake,” wrote the judge in his opinion.  Nonetheless, Miller refused to make it because of her religious objections to same-sex marriage, and offered to refer them to another bakery in town that was happy to make wedding cakes for same-sex couples.

Eileen and Mireya filed an administrative complaint, charging Miller and her business with a violation of the Unruh Civil Rights Act, California’s law that prohibits discrimination by businesses.  The Department of Fair Employment and Housing, with is charged with enforcement of the law, filed suit against the bakery, asking the court to issue an injunction requiring that Miller’s business not refuse to make wedding cakes for same-sex couples.

Miller’s defense relied on two provisions of the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, one forbidding laws that abridge freedom of speech, and the other forbidding laws that prohibit the free exercise of religion.   Judge Lampe decided that this case could be resolved most easily by reference to the free speech provision, and did not render a ruling on whether the free exercise of religion clause would protect Miller in this case.

The judge accepted Miller “cake artist” argument, the same argument that Jack Phillips of Masterpiece Cakeshop in Colorado is making in his case pending before the U.S. Supreme Court.  Miller and Phillips argue that when they are contracting to produce a cake for a specific event, they are engaging in a creative effort that communicates a message of endorsement for that event.  Under this theory of symbolic speech, they argue, requiring them to make the cake when they do not approve of the event is compelling them to voice a particular message.

They rely on past decisions in which the Supreme Court has found that government officials had violated free speech rights by compelling people to voice particular messages with which they disagree, such as the famous “flag salute” cases first decided during World War II and most recently reiterated in  Wooley v. Maynard, 430 U.S. 705 (1977), in which the Court famously reversed direction on this issue, overruling its own prior precedent to find that the government cannot compel a student to recite the pledge of allegiance.  Although there are circumstances where the courts have held that government requirements did not impose a substantial burden on free speech, the compelled speech argument has taken on particular weight in several important LGBT-related rulings.

The Supreme Court unanimously ruled in Hurley v. Irish-American Gay, Lesbian & Bisexual Group of Boston, 515 U.S. 557 (1995), for example, that Massachusetts civil rights authorities could not compel the organizers of the Boston St. Patrick’s Day Parade to include an LGBT rights contingent in the parade with a banner proclaiming their identity.  The court said this would unconstitutionally compel the parade organizers to include a message in their event that they did not want to include.  Similarly, although more controversially, the Court later ruled in Boy Scouts of America v. Dale, 530 US 640 (2000), that the BSA was not required to allow an openly gay man to service as an adult leader, because that would be compelling them to implicitly send a message of endorsement for homosexuality which they did not want to communicate to their members or the public.  Unlike the unanimous parade decision, however, the Court split 5-4 in the Boy Scouts case, with a minority rejecting the contention that the BSA’s free speech rights would be unconstitutionally burdened.

Despite these rulings, the Court concluded that Congress did not unconstitutionally burden the free speech rights of law schools when it required them to allow military recruiters equal access to their facilities, reasoning that the schools were free to communicate their disagreement with the anti-gay policies then followed by the Defense Department and that hosting the recruiters was not necessarily sending a message of agreement with their policies.  Rumsfeld v. Forum for Academic & Institutional Rights, Inc., 547 U.S. 47 (2006).  And the Court concluded that a state university law school was not violating the free speech or free exercise rights of conservative Christian students when it required a Christian Legal Society chapter to allow gay students to be members if CLS wanted to be an officially recognized student organization.  Christian Legal Society v. Martinez, 130 S. Ct. 2971 (2010).

It is difficult to follow a consistent thread of reasoning through these cases, each of which presents a slightly different factual context, which is why there is some suspense about how the Supreme Court is going to decide the Masterpiece Cakeshop case.  So far, however, lower courts have been unanimous in ruling that bakers, florists, photographers, videographers, non-religious wedding venues are all required to comply with public accommodations laws (in states where they exist) and provide their services and goods to same-sex couples celebrating their unions.

Judge Lampe, the first to depart from this consensus, accepted Miller’s compelled speech argument.  “No public commentator in the marketplace of ideas may be forced by law to publish any opinion with which he disagrees in the name of equal access,” wrote the judge.  “No baker may place their wares in a public display case, open their shop, and then refuse to sell because of race, religion, gender, or gender identification.”

But, he wrote, this case is different. “The difference here is that the cake in question is not yet baked.  The State is not petitioning the court to order defendants to sell a cake.  The State asks this court to compel Miller to use her talents to design and create a cake she has not yet conceived with the knowledge that her work will be displayed in celebration of a marital union her religion forbids.  For this court to force such compliance would do violence to the essentials of Free Speech guaranteed under the First Amendment.”

Judge Lampe acknowledged that there was a clash of rights here, and no matter which way he ruled, somebody would feel insulted. “The court finds that any harm here is equal to either complainants or defendant Miller, one way or the other. If anything, the harm to Miller is the greater, because it carries significant economic consequences.  When one feels injured, insulted, or angered by the words or expressive conduct of others, the harm is many times self-inflicted.  The most effective Free Speech in the family of our nation is when we speak and listen with respect.  In any case, the court cannot guarantee that no one will be harmed when the law is enforced.  Quite the contrary, when the law is enforced, someone necessarily loses.  Nevertheless, the court’s duty is to the law.  Whenever anyone exercises the right of Free Speech, someone else may be angered or hurt.  This is the nature of a free society under our Constitution.”

The judge acknowledged that the case is more difficult if it is treated as a free exercise of religion case, because the Supreme Court has ruled that neutral state laws of general application do not include within them a constitutional exemption for religious dissenters. “Whether the application of the Unruh Act in these circumstances violates the Free Exercise clause is an open question,” he wrote, “and the court does not address it because the case is sufficiently resolved upon Free Speech grounds.”

Interestingly, the judge’s approach mirrors that of U.S. Solicitor General Noel Francisco in the Masterpiece Cakeshop case before the Supreme Court. In briefing and argument, the Solicitor General placed the government’s support for Jack Phillips’ right to refuse to make the wedding cake entirely on Free Speech grounds, and disclaimed taking any position on his right of free exercise of religion – despite the Trump Administration’s more general position, expressed in a “religious freedom” memorandum by Attorney General Jeff Sessions, that religious free exercise rights should be treated as superior to just about any other legal claim.

Perhaps Judge Lampe’s decision is truly an outlier in the ongoing controversies stemming from the Supreme Court’s ruling in 2015 that same-sex couples have a constitutional right to marry, but on the other hand it may be an accurate prediction of how the Supreme Court will deal with the issue, at least in cases where the goods or services at issue could be plausibly described in terms of expressive content.

Oregon Court of Appeals Rules against Baker in “Gay Wedding Cake” Case

Posted on: December 31st, 2017 by Art Leonard No Comments

A unanimous three-judge panel of the Court of Appeals of Oregon affirmed a ruling by the Oregon Bureau of Labor and Industries (BOLI) that Melissa and Aaron Klein, doing business as Sweetcakes by Melissa, violated the state’s public accommodations law by refusing to provide a wedding cake for Rachel and Laurel Bowman-Cryer.  The ruling upheld an award of $135,000 in damages, rejecting the Kleins’ argument that this application of the state law to them violates their 1st Amendment rights.  However, the court overruled the BOLI’s determination that the Kleins’ public remarks in connection with this case had also violated a separate section of the law forbidding businesses to announce in advance that they will discriminate in the future.  Judge Chris Garrett wrote for the panel.

This case is, for all practical purposes, a virtual clone of the Colorado case, Masterpiece Cakeshop, which was argued at the U.S. Supreme Court on December 5, 2017.

Rachel and Laurel first met in 2004 and decided to marry in 2012. Rachel and her mother, Cheryl, went to a Portland bridal show as part of their wedding planning, and visited Melissa Klein’s booth at the show.  Sweetcakes by Melissa had designed, created and decorated a wedding cake for Cheryl’s wedding two years before, and Rachel and Cheryl told Melissa that they would like to order a cake from her.  A cake-testing appointment was set up for January 17, 2013.  Rachel and Cheryl visited the bakery shop, in Gresham, for their appointment.  Melissa was at home performing child care, so the appointment was with her husband and co-proprietor, Aaron.  During the tasting, Aaron asked for the names of the bride and groom, and was told there were two brides, Rachel and Laurel.  “At that point,” wrote Judge Garrett, “Aaron stated that he was sorry, but that Sweetcakes did not make wedding cakes for same-sex ceremonies because of his and Melissa’s religious convictions.  Rachel began crying, and Cheryl took her by the arm and walked her out of the shop.  On the way to their car, Rachel became ‘hysterical’ and kept apologizing to her mother, feeling that she had humiliated her.”

In their car, Cheryl assured Rachel that they would find somebody else to make the cake. After driving a short distance, Cheryl turned back and re-entered the bakery by herself to talk with Aaron.  “During their conversation,” wrote Judge Garrett, “Cheryl told Aaron that she had previously shared his thinking about homosexuality, but that her ‘truth had changed’ as a result of having ‘two gay children.’  In response, Aaron quoted a Bible passage from the Book of Leviticus, stating, ‘You shall not lie with a male as one lies with a female; it is an abomination.’  Cheryl left and returned to the car, where Rachel had remained, ‘holding [her] head in her hands, just bawling.”  Cheryl telling Rachel that Aaron had called her an “abomination” didn’t make things any better.  Rachel later stated that “it made me feel like they were saying God made a mistake when he made me, that I wasn’t supposed to be, that I wasn’t supposed to love or be loved or have a family or live a good life and one day go to heaven.”  When they got home and told Laurel what had happened, she recognized the “abomination” reference from Leviticus and “felt shame and anger.  Rachel was inconsolable, which made Laurel even angrier.”  It was Laurel who filed an online complaint with the Oregon Department of Justice, but later she filed a complaint with BOLI, as did Rachel.

News of the complaints generated a wave of media attention, which resulted in death threats and adverse attention to Rachel and Laurel as well as to the Kleins. Ultimately, BOLI’s investigation concluded that the Kleins violated two sections of the public accommodations law, one forbidding discrimination by businesses in providing goods and services because of the sexual orientation of customers, the other, based on statements that the Kleins had made about the case, as well as a sign they posted in their bakery, that they violated a provision making it unlawful for a business to announce its intent to discriminate against customers because of their sexual orientation.  An administrative law judge (ALJ) sustained the first but not the second, finding that the comments in question related to the Klein’s position on this case and was not a general announcement of intent to discriminate in the future.  At the agency level, however, BOLI, disagreeing with the ALJ on this point, ruled that both provisions had been violated, and the Kleins appealed to the Court of Appeals.  The ALJ and BOLI agreed on an award of $135,000 in damages to Rachel and Laurel, to compensate them for the mental, emotional or physical suffering sustained because of the discrimination.  The agency rejected a claim for additional damages for mental, emotional or physical suffering stemming from the media and public response to their filing of the discrimination charges against the Kleins.

The first issue for the court was to determine whether the Kleins were correct in arguing that they had not violated the statute because, as they contended, their business does not discriminate against people because of their status as gay, but rather, in this instance, was declining to “facilitate the celebration of a union that conveys a message about marriage to which they do not subscribe and that contravenes their religious beliefs.” The court rejected this attempt to skirt the issue, commenting that “there is no reason to believe that the legislature intended a ‘status/conduct’ distinction specifically with regard to the subject of ‘sexual orientation.’”
Judge Garrett pointed to the state’s passage of the Oregon Family Fairness Act, which specifically provides that same-sex couples should be entitled to the same rights and privileges of different-sex couples. “The Kleins have not provided us with any persuasive explanation for why the legislature would have intended to grant equal privileges and immunities to individuals in same-sex relationships while simultaneously excepting those committed relationships from the protections of” the public accommodations law. The court pointed out that “under the distinction proposed by the Kleins, owners and operators of businesses could continue to oppress and humiliate black people simply by recasting their bias in terms of conduct rather than race.  For instance, a restaurant could refuse to serve an interracial couple, not on account of the race of either customer, but on account of the conduct – interracial dating – to which the proprietor objected.  In the absence of any textual or contextual support, or legislative history on that point, we decline to construe [the law] in a way that would so fundamentally undermine its purpose.”

Indeed, wrote the court, “The Kleins refused to make a wedding cake for the complainants precisely and expressly because of the relationship between sexual orientation and the conduct at issue (a wedding).  And, where a close relationship between status and conduct exists, the Supreme Court has repeatedly rejected the type of distinction urged by the Kleins.”  Judge Garrett cited the Supreme Court’s 2010 ruling, upholding the University of California-Hasting’s refusal to extend official recognition to a Christian Legal Society chapter whose membership policies excluded gay people, in which Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, writing for the Court, made this point, as well as Lawrence v. Texas, the Texas sodomy law case, where Justice Kennedy wrote for the Court that making gay conduct a crime was “an invitation to subject homosexual persons to discrimination both in the public and in the private spheres.”

Turning to the constitutional challenges, the court rejected both the free speech and free exercise of religion arguments. For one thing, the court found, while conceding there would be an element of artistic expression and creativity in the process of making a wedding cake, this did not present the type of free speech issues that would merit strict scrutiny from the court.  Rather, the court found, the Supreme Court’s public accommodations jurisprudence treated such laws as neutral laws intended to achieve a legitimate purpose of extending equal rights to participate in the community, and not specifically targeted on particular political or religious views held by a particular business person.  The Kleins premised their arguments largely on the Supreme Court’s Hurley (St. Patrick’s Day Parade) and Dale (Boy Scouts) cases, in which the Supreme Court held that application of a public accommodations law to require an organization or association to include gay people would have to yield to the free expression rights of an organization that has a particularly expressive purpose.  They also focused on the famous flag salute cases from World War II and other cases in which the Supreme Court ruled that the government cannot compel private individuals to express a message dictated by the government.

Wrote Judge Garrett, “We must decide whether the Kleins’ cake-making activity is sufficiently expressive, communicative, or artistic so as to implicate the First Amendment, and, if it is, whether BOLI’s final order compelling the creation of such expression in a particular circumstance survives First Amendment scrutiny.” Reviewing the way the Kleins produced customized wedding cakes for their customers, the court found, “the Kleins’ argument that their products entail artistic expression is entitled to be taken seriously.  That being said, we are not persuaded that the Kleins’ wedding cakes are entitled to the same level of constitutional protection as pure speech or traditional forms of artistic expression.  In order to establish that their wedding cakes are fundamentally pieces of art, it is not enough that the Kleins %believe% them to be pieces of art.  For First Amendment purposes, the expressive character of a thing must turn not only on how it is subjectively perceived by its maker, but also on how it will be perceived and experienced by others.  Here, although we accept that the Kleins imbue each wedding cake with their own aesthetic choices, they have made no showing that other people will necessarily experience %any% wedding cake that the Kleins create predominantly as ‘expression’ rather than as food.”

Further, the court found that it would be a different case “if BOLI’s order had awarded damages against the Kleins for refusing to decorate a cake with a specific message requested by a customer (‘God Bless This Marriage,’ for example) that they found offensive or contrary to their beliefs.” Then an articulated message would be conveyed, and the First Amendment issue would be much stronger.  Responding to the Kleins’ concern that the wedding cake communicates a “celebratory message” about the wedding, which they did not wish to communicate, the court pointed out that “the Kleins have not raised a nonspeculative possibility that anyone attending the wedding will impute that message to the Kleins.”  In short, wedding guests will not respond to seeing the cake at the reception by thinking that the baker is “celebrating” or “approving” this wedding.  There is nothing in the law that requires the Kleins to formally endorse same-sex marriages.

However, having found that there is at least some First Amendment free speech interest involved, the court applied “intermediate scrutiny” and found that the state had a compelling interest “both in ensuring equal access to publicly available goods and services and in preventing the dignitary harm that results from discriminatory denials of service. That interest is no less compelling with respect to the provision of services for same-sex weddings,” wrote Garrett.  “Indeed, that interest is particularly acute when the state seeks to prevent the dignitary harms that result from the unequal treatment of same-sex couples who choose to exercise their fundamental right to marry,” as established in Obergefell, the Supreme Court’s marriage equality decision.

The court concluded that “any burden imposed on the Kleins’ expression is no greater than essential to further the state’s interest,” pointing out that “BOLI’s order does not compel the Kleins to express an articulable message with which they disagree. … Given that the state’s interest is to avoid the ‘evil of unequal treatment, which is the injury to an individual’s sense of self-worth and personal integrity,’” wrote Garrett, quoting from a prior Oregon Supreme Court case, “there is no doubt that interest would be undermined if businesses that market their goods and services to the ‘public’ are given a special privilege to exclude certain groups from the meaning of that word.”

Turning to the free exercise of religion point, the court noted that the Supreme Court held in Employment Division v. Smith that “the right of free exercise does not relieve an individual of the obligation to comply with a ‘valid and neutral law of general applicability on the ground that the law proscribed (or prescribes) conduct that his religion prescribes (or proscribes).”  The “incidental effect” on religion of such laws does not violate the 1st Amendment.

The court devoted most of its analysis on this point to distinguishing cases offered by the Kleins as exceptions to this rule. All of those cases involved special circumstances where it could be shown that although the laws in question were neutral on their face, they had been intended by the legislature to apply to particular religious practices and were thus not really “neutral to religion.”  The Kleins also pushed a “hybrid rights” theory, mentioned in passing in the Smith case, under which when a party’s claim arises under two different constitutional rights guarantees (in this case speech and religious exercise) the burden of justification on the state should be raised to strict scrutiny.  The court observed that apart from the passing mention in Smith, that concept had not been developed by the Supreme Court, had been rejected by many other courts, and specifically had never been adopted by the Oregon Supreme Court in construing the state’s constitution.

The court rejected the Kleins’ arguments that recognizing a limited or narrow exception for businesses whose owners had religious objections to same-sex marriage would have only a “minimal” effect on “the state’s antidiscrimination objectives,” pointing out that “those with sincere religious objections to marriage between people of different races, ethnicities, or faiths could just as readily demand the same exemption. The Kleins do not offer a principled basis for limiting their requested exemption in the manner that they propose, except to argue that there are ‘decent and honorable’ reasons, grounded in religious faith, for opposing same-sex marriage, as recognized by the United States Supreme Court in Obergefell.  That is not in dispute.  But neither the sincerity, nor the religious basis, nor the historical pedigree of a particular belief has been held to give a special license for discrimination,” wrote Garrett.

The court rejected the Kleins’ claim for free speech and religious exemptions under the Oregon Constitution, pointing out that they had not advanced any additional arguments peculiar to Oregon constitutional jurisprudence that would justify going beyond the federal constitutional analysis in this case. The court also rejected the argument that BOLI’s ruling should be set aside because BOLI’s Commissioner had made public comments about the case before voting to affirm the ALJ’s ruling and award the damages.  The court found that the commissioner’s comments “fall short of the kinds of statements that reflect prejudgment of the facts or an impermissibly closed-minded view of law or policy so as to indicate that he, as a decision maker, cannot be impartial.”  The court rejected the Kleins’ objection to the damage award, finding that the ALJ and BOLI had scrupulously limited the award to damages flowing from the Kleins’ discrimination and had an adequate basis in the trial record to award the amounts in question, which were not out of line with awards in other cases.

However, the court concluded that BOLI erred by failing to affirm the ALJ’s conclusion that the Kleins had not violated a section of the law that forbids any business “to publish, circulate, issue or display… any communication, notice, advertisement or sign of any kind to the effect that any of the accommodations, advantages, facilities, services or privileges of the place of public accommodation will be refused, withheld from or denied to, or that any discrimination will be made against, any person on account of. . . sexual orientation.” The court, agreeing with the ALJ but not with BOLI, found that the Kleins’ public comments about their determination to defend this case and to adhere to their religious beliefs did not specifically violate this provision.

The Kleins were careful in wording the sign they put up at their bakery and in their comments on Facebook and in the press to avoid stating that they would discriminate because of a customer’s sexual orientation. Their position throughout this case is that they were not engaging in such discrimination.  The court was not willing to interpret this section of the statute as exposing businesses to additional liability for stating publicly their belief that their past action had not violated the law.  Since BOLI’s calculation of damages awarded to Rachel and Laurel did not include any amount for violation of this section, however, the reversal of this part of the decision did not require any reduction in damages.

The Kleins were represented in this appeal by attorneys from several law firms, some specializing in championing socially conservative causes, so it would not be surprising to see them file an appeal with the Oregon Supreme Court. The Oregon attorney general’s office represented BOLI.  Lambda Legal filed an amicus brief on behalf of Rachel and Laurel.  A long list of liberal religious associations and organizations joined in an amicus brief filed by pro bono attorneys in support of BOLI’s ruling, and amicus briefs were also filed by the ACLU and Americans United for Separation of Church and State.