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Colorado baker loses appeal over refusal to make gender transition cake
A Colorado baker who had won a narrow U.S. Supreme Court victory over his refusal to make a wedding cake for a gay couple on Thursday lost his appeal of a ruling in a separate case that he violated a state anti-discrimination law by not making a cake to celebrate a gender transition.
This seems destined to wind its way back onto the Supreme Court's docket.
What really doesn't make sense here is the contradiction between the two opening paragraphs of the story. The first paragraph says the refusal of service was based on the fact that the cake was for a gender transition celebration. The second paragraph says he denied service based on the customer's "identity as a transgender woman." These are not the same thing. My suspicion is that, like the facts of the original Masterpiece Cakeshop case, the owner was perfectly willing to serve the person, but was not willing to contribute anything to the event.
This case seems even flimsier than the original as well. The original basis for the original lawsuit was that Phillips made cakes for weddings, therefore his refusal to make a cake for a gay wedding was discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation (a dubious claim, as he would likely be no more willing to make a cake celebrating a gay wedding for straight customers than he would be to make the cake for gay customers). In order to make a similar claim, one would have to show he was willing to make cakes celebrating gender transitions for persons who didn't "identify as a transgender" person.
Unless one can show the customer was refused service based on his identification as a transgender woman (and the lower court's opinion at paragraph 6 on page 3 appears to make clear this was not the case), I don't see how there's any discrimination going on here at all.