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For more than 10 years, a Colorado law has been misused to punish me for something I didn’t do. For more than 30 years, my family and I have quietly operated Masterpiece Cakeshop, baking treats and specializing in custom-designed cakes to celebrate special occasions. I welcome everyone into my shop, treat them with respect, and if they ask for a particular kind of custom cake, do my best to create something beautiful and memorable. Like most of us, I too have sincere beliefs that guide and inspire my life, so I can only create custom cakes that will express or...

Masterpiece Cakeshop owner Jack Phillips has scored a victory of sorts in his ongoing lawsuit for refusing to bake a gender transition cake, with the Colorado Supreme Court agreeing to hear his appeal.Baker Jack Phillips decorates a cake in his Masterpiece Cakeshop in Lakewood, Colo., on Sep. 21, 2017. (Rick Wilking/Reuters)Last week, in a win for Mr. Phillips' years-long legal fight, the Colorado Supreme Court finally agreed to hear his case after a lower court held that Colorado authorities can force the baker to put messages on cakes that violate his personal beliefs, according to a case announcements posting.Mr. Phillips,...

I’ve been writing about Denver-area baker Jack Phillips for over a decade now. It’s clear to me he’s going to be badgered into the grave by authoritarians intent on punishing him for thought crimes. From the first time his name appeared in the news until this day, the media have misled the public about him, about the case, and about the law. The latest chapter in Phillips’ Kafkaesque saga involves a transgendered lawyer named Autumn Scardina, who demanded Phillips create a pink cake with blue frosting to help celebrate a “gender transition.” As expected, Phillips, who’d already spent years fighting...

Last week the Supreme Court issued its landmark decision that Lorie Smith, a Colorado-based Christian graphic artist and web designer, did not have to create content that violated her beliefs. In response, Clara Jeffery, editor-in-chief of Mother Jones, tweeted, “perhaps gay stylists, designers, caterers, and planners should start withholding services from Christian conservatives and see where that goes.” After all, Jeffery reasoned, if a Christian can create content for a gay couple, surely gay professionals can decline services to Christian conservatives.More extreme was the reaction of actor Michael Imperioli who posted on Instagram, “I’ve decided to forbid bigots and homophobes...

Masterpiece Cakeshop owner Jack Phillips appealed to the Colorado Supreme Court to overturn a lower court’s ruling that he violated anti-discrimination laws by refusing to create a cake celebrating a gender transition. Phillips and his attorneys from the Alliance Defending Freedom filed a petition on Thursday with the state’s highest court. In January, the state Court of Appeals ruled in favor of attorney Autumn Scardina, who requested from Phillips a blue and pink birthday cake to celebrate transitioning from male to female. Scardina’s request was made in 2018 on the same day the U.S. Supreme Court announced it would hear...

Denver, Colo., Jan 26, 2023 / 15:45 pm A Colorado appellate court has ruled against a baker who appeared in court once again for declining to make a cake that contradicts his religious beliefs. While Jack Phillips’ successful U.S. Supreme Court case concerned his refusal to make a same-sex wedding cake, he now faces a civil lawsuit for declining to make a cake celebrating a purported gender transition of a transgender-identifying attorney. In a Thursday decision, a Colorado Court of Appeals three-judge panel sided with Autumn Scardina, a man who identifies as a transgender woman. Scardina said Phillips and his...

“Phillips works with all people and always decides whether to take a project based on what message a cake will express, not who is requesting it,” an ADF press release states.Masterpiece Cakeshop owner and devout Christian Jack Phillips is facing another bout of legal persecution after the Colorado Court of Appeals ruled that he violated the state’s anti-discrimination laws for refusing to bake a cake celebrating transgenderism. A three-judge panel determined on Thursday that Phillips’s firmly held belief that “God designed people male and female” is moot when it comes to his family business’s decision to decline the sales of...

Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch asked Monday whether Colorado baker Jack Phillips was forced to undergo “reeducation” after refusing to bake a cake for a gay wedding. Gorsuch’s question came during oral arguments in the case of 303 Creative v. Elenis. Lorie Smith, who owns 303 Creative and provides graphic and web design services, sued the state in 2016 because she did not want to create wedding websites for same-sex couples, arguing the law violated her First Amendment rights. The case is similar to that of a 2018 case involving baker Jack Phillips, also from Colorado, who refused to make...

BAKERSFIELD, Calif. (KGET) — A Kern County judge ruled Friday that Tastries Bakery owner Cathy Miller can not be forced to bake wedding cakes for same-sex couples. Judge Eric Bradshaw found Miller’s “pure and expressive speech is entitled to protection under the First Amendment.” The baking of a Tastries wedding cake is “labor-intensive” and “artistic,” Bradshaw said in his ruling Friday. “We applaud the court for this decision,” said Thomas More Society Special Counsel Charles LiMandri, partner at LiMandri & Jonna LLP, one of Miller’s attorneys. “The freedom to practice one’s religion is enshrined in the First Amendment, and the...

SCOTUS takes up another Colorado caseTRANSCRIPTIn tonight's In-Depth Report, another example of the Left's drive to compel speech is on the Supreme Court's docket. Jack Phillips, owner, Masterpiece Cakeshop: "I'm not judging these two gay men who came in. I'm just trying to preserve my right as an artist to decide which artistic endeavors I'm going to do and which ones I'm not." Following in the footsteps of Masterpiece Cakeshop baker Jack Phillips, another Colorado artist is asking the Supreme Court to provide relief from the state's anti-discrimination law. Lorie Smith is a website designer who sought to expand her...

DENVER (AP) — The Colorado baker who won a partial Supreme Court victory after refusing on religious grounds to make a gay couple’s wedding cake a decade ago is challenging a separate ruling he violated the state’s anti-discrimination law by refusing to make a cake celebrating a gender transition. A lawyer for Jack Phillips on Wednesday urged Colorado’s appeals court — largely on procedural grounds — to overturn last year’s ruling in a lawsuit brought by a transgender woman. The woman, Autumn Scardina, called Phillips’ suburban Denver cake shop in 2017 requesting a birthday cake that had blue frosting on...

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Supreme Court has agreed to hear a new clash involving religion and the rights of LGBT people. The high court said Tuesday it would hear the case of Colorado-based web designer Lorie Smith. Smith offers graphic and website design services and wants to expand to wedding website services, but she says her religious beliefs would lead her to decline any request from a same-sex couple to design a wedding website. She also wants to post a statement on her website about her beliefs, but that would run afoul of a Colorado anti-discrimination law. Smith had argued...

New York Gov. Kathy Hochul said the state will expand its COVID-19 vaccine mandate for healthcare workers to include booster shots, becoming the first state to require boosters for healthcare employees while also signaling that a growing number of institutions are increasingly aiming to mandate them.Hochul, a Democrat, said in a Friday news briefing that state healthcare workers are required to get the extra shots. The state will accept only medical—not religious—exemptions, consistent with previous mandates on COVID-19 and non-COVID-19 vaccines.Under the mandate, healthcare workers will have to get boosters within two weeks of their eligibility. Recently, the Food and...

The House of Representatives committee investigating the Jan. 6 breach of the U.S. Capitol acknowledged on Wednesday that it doctored a text message between former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows and Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio), excluding content about how they wanted former Vice President Mike Pence to handle electoral votes during the Joint Session of Congress earlier this year. On Monday, Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.), the head of the House Intelligence Committee, showed a graphic during a hearing on newly obtained communications between Meadows and others, including Jordan. The graphic was displayed as the Jan. 6 panel was...

Harvard law professor emeritus Alan Dershowitz says Kyle Rittenhouse “should be acquitted” of killing two men and wounding a third during riots and protests last year in Kenosha, Wisconsin, and he should file defamation lawsuits against media outlets for claiming that he’s guilty of murder. “If I were a juror, I would vote that there was reasonable doubt [and] that he did act in self-defense,” Dershowitz told Newsmax on Nov. 13. Rittenhouse, if acquitted, should then “bring lawsuits” against corporate news outlets for articles claiming the teen engaged in “vigilante justice,” Dershowitz said. “It’s CNN who is involved in vigilante...

Florida’s Chief Financial Officer, Jimmy Patronis, suggested that In-N-Out Burger should move to the Sunshine State after several In-N-Out locations were shut down by California officials.Patronis appealed to In-N-Out CEO Lynsi Snyder to move to the state, arguing that Florida has a superior business climate—noting the state has no personal income tax, low corporate taxes, and no mandates.“I’m writing you today not only as Florida’s Chief Financial Officer, but as a small business owner who grew up in a family-owned restaurant and worked there for more than 30 years,” his letter reads. “I know how hard it is to turn...

Christians will suffer because of what we believe. We must take the opportunity every single day, in every aspect of our lives, to demonstrate courage.What follows is adapted from a speech given at the Truth Be Told conference in Tennessee on Saturday, October 2. Twenty-eight years ago yesterday, Task Force Ranger was deployed on a mission to capture the lieutenants of a warlord who had been wreaking havoc on the people of Mogadishu, Somalia. Authorized as part of Operation Restore Hope, the mission goal was to gather intelligence that would lead to the capture of warlord Mohamed Farrah Aidid. This...

Baker Jack Phillips poses in his Masterpiece Cakeshop in Lakewood, ColoradoMy Faith Votes recently had the opportunity to catch up with Jack Phillips, a cake artist and the owner of Masterpiece Cakeshop in Lakewood, Colorado. Phillips gained national recognition as a result of his Supreme Court case, Masterpiece Cakeshop, Ltd. v. Colorado Civil Rights Commission, which originated when Phillips refused to create a cake for a same-sex wedding in 2012.This conversation has been edited for clarity and length. You can watch the full conversation with Jack Phillips here.My Faith Votes: Your book, “The Cost of My Faith: How a Decision...

Sometimes decisions made in less than thirty seconds, even those in accordance with one’s faith, can alter the course of one’s life, and perhaps the nation.Such was the case with Jack Phillips, proprietor of Masterpiece Cake Shop in Lakewood Colorado, a Denver suburb. After learning baking skills and honing his artistic craft at several area bakeries, he opened his own shop in 1993, providing baked goods, most notably custom cakes to his customers.In 2012, two men named David and Charlie asked Mr. Phillips to create them a wedding cake. Mr. Phillips calmly explained he could not honor their request because...

Americans celebrating our 245th birthday this weekend largely fall into two groups. Those in the first will simply take it for granted that freedom rings—assume that the liberties we’ve traditionally enjoyed are liberties we will always enjoy—turn on the ball game, hit the pool, and look for the fireworks. That’s a choice most Americans will happily make.Those in the second group will do something many of us do when we hit one of our own personal milestone birthdays—30, 40, 50, etc. We can pause, if only for a moment or two, to assess where we are, and where we’re going.Things...