California rules against Baker in the civil rights case

Baker of Kern County violated California’s law when he refused to sell a cake to a lesbian couple for their wedding, State Court of Appeal ruled this week in a claim filed by the State Department of Civil Rights.

If the script sounds familiar, it is because it is central to a series of cases that have for years shaping the legitimate debate on the nation on freedom of expression and anti -discrimination laws.

In 2018, the US Supreme Court Colorado Decision that a baker violated the state’s non -discrimination law when he refused to bake the wedding cake of the same -sex couple. The decision is based on the court’s finding that the Colorado Civil Rights Commission, which deals with the case, was prejudiced against Baker’s religious beliefs.

The court In 2023 he managedAlso in the case of Colorado, in favor of a website designer who opposed same -sex marriage to religious reasons and who feared that the same statutes of the state could, in theory, force her to design a wedding website for a gay couple. This would violate the rights to the first -expression designer to the designer, the Supreme Court ruled in a decision according to which LGBTQ right activists said can open the door to more discrimination in public spaces.

California’s decision this week is attracting the limits of what is considered to the right of the owner of a free expression business.

In a statement, the Director of the California Civil Rights Commission, Kevin Kish, praised the decision to maintain the “long -standing principle, guaranteeing all Californians complete and equal access to services and goods on the market”.

The case stems from the marriage of Eileen and Mireya Rodriguez-Del Rio, who visited the Bakery Tastries in Bakersfield To buy a wedding cake in August 2017

The couple talks with an employee and chose a pre -designed plain, white, three -stage cake that the bakery often sells for various celebrations, including birthdays and baby showers, according to court files. When the couple returned with friends and family to tasting the next week, Tastris owner Catarin Miller refused to sell the cake after learning that he would be served at the same -sex wedding.

Miller is a pious Christian who also refuses to make cakes depicting the use of marijuana or sexual images. Subsequently, she told the courts that there was a policy of bakeries that say that “wedding cakes should not contradict God’s mystery from marriage between a man and a woman.”

The couple filed a complaint with the State Department of Civil Rights, which filed establishments for Miller in 2018. Miller, who is represented by the Beckett Fund for religious freedom, claims that her policy is based on her religious beliefs about marriage rather than animate to marriage LGBTQ people.

Judge in Kern County gave up on it, deciding that Miller’s policy does not violate the State Civil Rights Act as it applies to all customers and because Miller refers the couple to another bakery who has previously agreed to sell cakes of same-sex pairs (but which Rodriguez-Del Rios had already turned off).

The state appealed the decision last year, and the three-member panel of the 5th Appellate District annulled it in a unanimous decision.

The judges have ruled that Miller’s policy is not neutral, as it can only be applied to customers only based on their sexual orientation. They also ruled that the reproduction of a simple cake without writing or decorations that Miller would sell to anyone else does not consider that he is forced to express support for a single -sex wedding.

“The preparation of the contours of a protected speech, including routinely produced, ordinary commercial products, since the artistic self -expression of the designer is uncomfortable over -production,” the judges wrote.

Miller, through a spokesman at Beckett’s Fund, declined to comment. In a statement, her lawyer and vice president of the Becket Fund Eric Rasbach said Miller would continue to rule the bakery as they appealed to the decision before the Supreme Court of the State.

“This case is not just about Katie Miller – but to protect the rights of all Americans

To live and work according to their deeply held beliefs, “said another of her lawyers, Charles Limmanri. “We will continue to fight in the courts on behalf of Katie to ensure that the freedom to experience its faith through her creative work is maintained and that justice is fully served.”

The case may be prepared for more appeals by conservative legal groups, which ultimately seek to expand the Supreme Court’s decision on the web designer case in Colorado and to establish exceptions to the laws on discrimination that allow the business to refuse services to services Gay Americans, Matt Cols, a professor at UC Law San Francisco, said.

But he said California’s decision makes important differences between designing a wedding website and creating a standard cake.

“It was not a great case for them,” Cole said. “The challenge in this case was how to draw a line between things that are clear speech or expression, and things that are obviously not? If what you sell is some kind of generic cake, you have no claims for 1 correction. “