New York Law School

Art Leonard Observations

Posts Tagged ‘gay weddings’

Alliance Defending Freedom Asks Supreme Court to Revisit Religious Exemption Issue

Posted on: October 1st, 2019 by Art Leonard No Comments

Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF), a religious freedom litigation group, is asking the Supreme Court to take a second look at Arlene’s Flowers v. State of Washington, No. 19-333 (Docketed September 12, 2019), in which the Washington Supreme Court held that a florist who refused to provide her usual custom floral design and installation wedding services for a same-sex couple had violated the state’s anti-discrimination law, and did not have a valid 1st Amendment defense.  The Washington court’s original decision was vacated by the Court in June 2018 for reconsideration in light of the Court’s ruling in Masterpiece Cakeshop v. Colorado Civil Rights Commission, 138 S. Ct. 1719 (2018), but the Washington Supreme Court reiterated its earlier holding, 441 P.3d 1203 (Wash. 2019), finding that the record of proceedings in the Superior Court and the Supreme Court in the earlier litigation showed no evidence of hostility to religion and thus was not affected by the Supreme Court’s ruling in Masterpiece.

The Petition proposes two questions for review:  1. Whether the State violates a floral designer’s First Amendment rights to free exercise and free speech by forcing her to take part in and create custom floral art celebrating same-sex weddings or by acting based on hostility toward her religious beliefs; and 2. Whether the Free Exercise Clause’s prohibition on religious hostility applies to the executive branch.

In the first question, the Petitioner asks the Court to take up the underlying constitutional issues in Masterpiece Cakeshop, which the Court evaded in its opinion, and to resolve them once and for all, pointing to litigation from around the country in which small businesses had declined to provide goods or services for same-sex weddings, based on the religious beliefs of the proprietors, and had been hauled into state human rights commissions or courts on charges of violating anti-discrimination laws.  There have been mixed results in these cases.  Beginning with a recalcitrant wedding photographer in New Mexico and continuing with cases involving bakers, florists, commercial wedding venues, stationers and videographers, administrative agencies and courts consistently ruled against allowing religious belief exemptions from generally-applicable anti-discrimination laws covering sexual orientation.  However, more recently, there has begun what may be a pendulum swing in the opposite direction, sparked in part by persistent appeals by ADF from adverse administrative and trial court rulings in affirmative litigation seeking declaratory judgments to establish religious exemptions.

In Masterpiece, the Court found several grounds taken together upon which to reverse the Colorado Court of Appeals’ ruling against the baker, most notably characterizing some public comments by Colorado commissioners that the Court found to evidence open hostility to the baker’s religious views.  The Court also noted an inconsistency in the Colorado Commission’s dismissal of complaints against bakers by a religious provocateur who sought to order cakes decorated to disparage same-sex marriages and was turned down.  The Court also noted that at the time the couple approach the baker, same-sex marriage was not yet legal in Colorado, so the baker could have believed he had no obligation to make such a cake.  While reasserting the general principle that businesses do not enjoy a religious freedom exemption from complying with public accommodation anti-discrimination laws, the Court observed that litigations raising religion freedom claims are entitled to a “neutral” forum to decide their cases, not one evidencing hostility to their religious views.

In Arlene’s Flowers, ADF had filed a statement with the Court after Masterpiece suggesting that evidence of hostility could be found in that case, and the Washington Supreme Court took the remand as a charge to scour the record for signs of such, which it did not find.  The Washington court read Masterpiece to be focused solely on the hostility or non-neutrality of the forum deciding the case.  That case did not involve a hearing before an administrative agency, as the first decision was by the trial court.

In its second proposed question, ADF argues that this was error by the Washington Supreme Court, contending that while the Masterpiece ruling was based on open hostility by commissioners, it could not properly be read to impose a ban on governmental hostility only on government actors performing the function of adjudicating cases.  ADF argues that the Attorney General of Washington evinced hostility and discrimination against religion by seizing upon news reports to come down hard on the florist, threatening litigation if she did not certify that in future should would provide her services to same-sex couples for weddings, making public comments criticizing religious objection to providing such services, and failing to bring similar action based on news reports about a coffee-shop owner expelling “Christians” from his establishment “based on religious views they expressed on a public street.”  ADF also criticized as “unprecedented” the Attorney General’s action in suing under the state’s Consumer Protection Law as well as the anti-discrimination law.

The Petition’s statement of facts is artfully written to suggest a saintly woman who loves gay people and happily sells them flowers for a variety of occasions, but just balks at providing custom weddings services based on her sincerely-held religious beliefs.  It argues that there is no evidence in the record of hostility toward gay people by the florist, emphasizing the long relationship she had selling floral goods to the men whom she turned down for wedding-related services, and maintaining that she had not turned down their business because they were gay but rather due to her religious objections to their wedding, and trying to draw that distinction as requiring dismissal of the discrimination complaint entirely.

The Petition argues that the Washington  Supreme Court took too narrow a view of the Supreme Court’s doctrine concerning the obligation of the government to refrain from hostility towards religion, pointing to cases where the Court had found legislatures as well as adjudicators to have violated the 1st Amendment, and argued that executives, such as the Attorney General, were no less bound by the First Amendment.  The Petition builds on a recent ruling by the 8th Circuit in the videographer case reported last month, Telescope Media Group v. Lucero, 2019 WL 3979621 (Aug. 23, 2019), and seeks to position the Petitioner, a florist, in the same category of First Amendment expression.  In effect, the Petition asks the Court to hold that any business that engages in creative expression for hire cannot be compelled to provide its services for an activity of which it disapproves on religious grounds.

Without making it a central part of the argument, the Petition notes several instances in which various members of the Court have suggested a need to reconsider its long-standing precedent in Employment Division v. Smith, 494 U.S. 872 (1990), intimating that this is the ideal case to do so.  That was the case that reversed decades of 1st Amendment free exercise precedents to hold that religious objectors do not enjoy a privilege to refuse to comply with religiously-neutral state laws of general application that incidentally may burden their free exercise of religion.  Employment Division prompted Congress to pass the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, applying the pre-Employment Division caselaw to the interpretation of federal statutes, and leading many states to pass similar laws.  A ruing overruling Employment Division and reinstating prior would law would, in effect, constitutionalize the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, making it more difficult in many cases for LGBTQ people suffering discrimination to vindicate their rights through legislative action, since the state and federal legislatures cannot overturn a Supreme Court constitutional ruling.

Arizona Appeals Court Cites Masterpiece Cakeshop Decision to Rule Out 1st Amendment Exemptions for Stationary Company

Posted on: June 11th, 2018 by Art Leonard No Comments

The precedential meaning of a Supreme Court decision depends on how lower courts interpret it.  The media reported the Supreme Court’s Masterpiece Cakeshop ruling as a “win” for baker Jack Phillips, since the court reversed the discrimination rulings against him by the Colorado Court of Appeals and the Colorado Civil Rights Commission.  But the opinion has a deeper significance than a superficial “win” or “loss” can capture, as the Arizona Court of Appeals demonstrated just days later in its rejection of a claim that a company that designs artwork for weddings and other special events can refuse to design and provide goods for same-sex weddings.

 

Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF), the same anti-LGBT legal outfit that represented Jack Phillips before the Supreme Court, represents Brush & Nib Studio, LC, a for-profit company that sells both pre-fabricated and specially designed artwork.  The company provides retail goods and services to the public, so it comes within the coverage of the city of Phoenix, Arizona’s, public accommodations anti-discrimination ordinance.

 

Although Brush & Nib had not received any requests to produce invitations for a same-sex wedding since such marriages became legal in Arizona, the owners had determined, based on their religious beliefs, that they would not provide their goods and services for such ceremonies.  Represented by ADF, they sued in the state trial court in Phoenix, seeking a preliminary injunction to bar enforcement of the ordinance against them in case such a customer should materialize in the future.

 

As described in the Court of Appeals’ opinion by Judge Lawrence F. Winthrop, the owners “believe their customer-directed and designed wedding products ‘convey messages about a particular engaged couple, their upcoming marriage, their upcoming marriage ceremony, and the celebration of that marriage.”  And they did not want any part of it.  They “also strongly believe in an ordained marriage between one man and one woman, and argue that they cannot separate their religious beliefs from their work.  As such, they believe being required to create customer-specific merchandise for same-sex weddings will violate their religious beliefs.”

 

They not only wanted to be assured that they could reject such business without risking legal liability; they also wanted to post a public statement explaining their religious beliefs, including a statement that they would not create any artwork that “promotes any marriage except marriage between one man and one woman.”  They haven’t posted such a statement yet out of concern that it would violate a provision of the Phoenix ordinance, which forbids a business from posting or making any communication that “states or implies that any facility or services shall be refused or restricted because of . . . sexual orientation . . . ,  or that any person, because of . . . sexual orientation . . . would be unwelcome, objectionable, unacceptable, undesirable, or not solicited.”

 

Maricopa County Superior Court Judge Karen Mullins rejected the motion for preliminary injunction, finding that the business did not enjoy a constitutional exemption.  The Court of Appeals held up ruling on ADF’s appeal until the Supreme Court issued its Masterpiece Cakeshop ruling on June 4, then quickly incorporated references to it into the opinion by Judge Winthrop issued on June 7.

 

After reviewing the unbroken string of state appellate court rulings from around the country that have rejected religious and free speech exemption claims in such cases over the past several years, Judge Winthrop wrote: “In light of these cases and consistent with the United States Supreme Court’s decisions, we recognize that a law allowing Appellants to refuse service to customers based on sexual orientation would constitute a ‘grave and continuing harm,’” citing the Supreme Court’s marriage equality ruling, Obergefell v. Hodges.

 

He continued with a lengthy quote from Justice Anthony Kennedy’s opinion for the Supreme court in Masterpiece Cakeshop:

“Our society has come to the recognition that gay persons and gay couples cannot be treated as social outcasts or as inferior in dignity and worth. For that reason the laws and the Constitution can, and in some instances must, protect them in the exercise of their civil rights. The exercise of their freedom on terms equal to others must be given great weight and respect by the courts. At the same time, the religious and philosophical objections to gay marriage are protected views and in some instances protected forms of expression. As this Court observed in Obergefell v. Hodges, ‘[t]he First Amendment ensures that religious organizations and persons are given proper protection as they seek to teach the principles that are so fulfilling and so central to their lives and faiths.’ Nevertheless, while those religious and philosophical objections are protected, it is a general rule that such objections do not allow business owners and other actors in the economy and in society to deny protected persons equal access to goods and services under a neutral and generally applicable public accommodations law. See Newman v. Piggy [Piggie] Park Enterprises, Inc. (1968) (per curiam); see also Hurley v. Irish–American Gay, Lesbian and Bisexual Group of Boston, Inc. (1995) (‘Provisions like these are well within the State’s usual power to enact when a legislature has reason to believe that a given group is the target of discrimination, and they do not, as a general matter, violate the First or Fourteenth Amendments’).”

 

The cases cited by Justice Kennedy in the quoted paragraph evidently sent a strong message for lower courts. Piggie Park is a classic early decision under the Civil Rights Act of 1964, holding that a restaurant owner’s religious opposition to racial integration could not excuse him from serving people of color in his barbecue restaurant.  Hurley was the famous St. Patrick’s Day Parade case from Boston, where the Supreme Court upheld the 1st Amendment right of parade organizers to exclude a gay Irish group from marching under their own banner proclaiming their gay identity.  The quoted language from that decision made clear that state’s may pass laws forbidding sexual orientation discrimination by businesses, but in this case the Court found that the parade organizers were not a business selling goods and services, but rather the non-profit organizers of an expressive activity who had a right to determine what their activity would express.

 

The points are clear: States can forbid businesses from discriminating against customers because of their sexual orientation, and businesses with religious objections will generally have to comply with the non-discrimination laws. The “win” for baker Jack Phillips involved something else entirely: the Supreme Court’s perception that Colorado’s Civil Rights Commission did not give Phillips a fair hearing because members of the Commission made public statements denigrating his religious beliefs at the hearing.  Justice Kennedy insisted for the court that a litigant’s dignity requires that the tribunal deciding his case be neutral and not overtly hostile to his religious beliefs, and that was the reason for reversing the state court and the state agency.  Kennedy’s discussion of the law clearly pointed in the other direction, as Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg observed in her dissent.  And the Arizona Court of Appeals clearly got that message.

 

Turning to ADF’s free speech argument, Justice Winthrop wrote, “Appellants argue that [the ordinance] compels them to speak in favor of same-sex marriages. We disagree.  Although [it] may have an incidental impact on speech, its main purpose is to prohibit discrimination, and thus [it] regulates conduct, not speech.”

 

The court found this case similar to Rumsfeld v. FAIR, a case in which the Supreme Court rejected a free speech challenge by an organization of law schools to a federal law that required schools to host military recruiters at a time when the Defense Department’s policies discriminated against gay people. The law schools claimed that complying with the law would violate their 1st Amendment rights, but the Supreme Court said that the challenged law did not limit what the schools could say, rather what they could do; that is, conduct, not speech.

 

“We find Rumsfeld controlling in this case,” wrote Winthrop. The court found that the “primary purpose” of the city ordinance is to “prohibit places of public accommodation from discriminating based on certain protected classes, i.e., sexual orientation, not to compel speech. . .  Like Rumsfeld, [the ordinance] requires that places of public accommodation provide equal services if they want to operate their business.  While such a requirement may impact speech, such as prohibiting places of public accommodation from posting signs that discriminate against customers, this impact is incidental to property regulated conduct.”

 

Further distinguishing this case from the Hurley decision, the court said that requiring the business to comply with the law “does not render their creation of design-to-order merchandise for same-sex weddings expressive conduct. The items Appellants would produce for a same-sex or opposite-sex wedding would likely be indistinguishable to the public.  Take for instance an invitation to the marriage of Pat and Pat (whether created for Patrick and Patrick, or Patrick and Patricia), or Alex and Alex (whether created for Alexander and Alexander, or Alexander and Alexa).  This invitation would not differ in creative expression.  Further, it is unlikely that a general observer would attribute a company’s product or offer of services, in compliance with the law, as indicative of the company’s speech or personal beliefs.  The operation of a stationery store – including the design and sale of customized wedding event merchandise – is not expressive conduct, and thus, is not entitled to First Amendment free speech protection.”

 

The court also rejected an argument that the ordinance violated the right of expressive association. “We do not dispute that some aspects of Appellants’ operation of Brush & Nib may implicated speech in some regard,” wrote Justice Winthrop, “but the primary purpose of Brush & Nib is not to convey a particular message but rather to engage in commercial sales activity.  Thus, Appellants’ operation of Brush & Nib is not the type of expressive association that the First Amendment is intended to protect.”  Certainly not like a parade, which the court in Hurley described as a “quintessential” expressive activity.

 

However, the court found that the portion of the ordinance dealing with forbidden communications used vague language that was overbroad and unclear about which statements might constitute violations. “We are unable to interpret [the ordinance’s] use of the words ‘unwelcome,’ ‘objectionable,’ ‘unacceptable,’ and ‘undesirable’ in a way that would render [it] constitutional,” wrote Winthrop.  “The presence of one invalid prohibition, however, does not invalidate all of [the ordinance].”

 

“Here, by striking the second half [of the offending section] – which bans an owner of a place of public accommodation from making a person feel ‘unwelcome,’ ‘objectionable,’ ‘unacceptable,’ and ‘undesirable’ based on sexual orientation – does not render the remainder of the ordinance unenforceable or unworkable. . .   The remainder of [the provision] operates independently and is enforceable as intended.”

 

Turning to the free exercise of religion issue, the court had to deal with the state’s Free Exercise of Religion Act, which prohibits governmental entities in Arizona from substantially burdening a person’s exercise of religion “even if the burden results from a rule of general applicability” unless the rule is both “in furtherance of a compelling government interest and is the least restrictive means of furthering that governmental interest.” The statute’s language is taken verbatim from the federal Religious Freedom Restoration Act.

The court rejected the argument that requiring the business to provide goods and services for same-sex weddings imposed a substantial burden on the religious beliefs of the business owners. “Appellants are not penalized for expressing their belief that their religion only recognizes the marriage of opposite sex couples,” wrote Winthrop.  “Nor are Appellants penalized for refusing to create wedding-related merchandise as long as they equally refuse similar services to opposite-sex couples.  [The ordinance] merely requires that, by operating a place of public accommodation, Appellants provide equal goods and services to customers regardless of sexual orientation.”  They could stop selling wedding-related goods altogether, but what they “cannot do is use their religion as a shield to discriminate against potential customers,” said the court.  Although providing those goods and services to same-sex couples might “decrease the satisfaction” with which they practice their religion, “this does not, a fortiori, make their compliance” a substantial burden to their religion.

 

And, even if it did impose such a burden, the court found that the city of Phoenix “has a compelling interest in preventing discrimination, and has done so here through the least restrictive means. When faced with similar contentions, other jurisdictions have overwhelmingly concluded that the government has a compelling interest in eradicating discrimination.”  The court quoted from the Washington Supreme Court’s decision in Arlene’s Flowers, but could just as well have been quoting Justice Kennedy’s language in Masterpiece Cakeshop, quoted here.

 

Finally, the court rejected an equal protection challenge to the ordinance, finding that it did not treat people with religious beliefs about marriage differently than others, and that the owners of the business could not claim that they are members of a “suspect class” for purposes of analyzing their equal protection claim. “Phoenix has a legitimate governmental purpose in curtailing discriminatory practices,” wrote Winthrop, “and prohibiting businesses from sexual orientation discrimination is rationally related to that purpose.”

 

A spokesperson for ADF promptly announced that they would seek review from the Arizona Supreme Court, which has discretion whether to review the decision. Seeking review, however, is a prerequisite to petitioning the U.S. Supreme Court.  ADF is clearly determined to get this issue back before the Supreme Court.  It represents Arlene’s Flowers, whose petition is now pending, and it also represents a videography company in a case similar to Brush & Nibs, affirmatively litigating to get an injunction to allow the company to expand into wedding videos without having to do them for same-sex weddings.  The district court’s ruling against them in that case is now on appeal in a federal circuit court. One way or another, it seems likely that this issue will get back to the Supreme Court before too long.

 

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.