After the commission dropped Scardina’s case, she filed a separate lawsuit last June arguing that Masterpiece Cakeshop violated both Colorado’s Anti-Discrimination Act and the Colorado Consumer Protection Act. The complaint, filed with the District Court for the City and County of Denver, alleges that the business “refused to sell a birthday cake to Ms. Scardina because she is transgender despite repeatedly advertising that they would sell birthday cakes to the general public, including LGBT individuals.” The prior complaint clarifies that the cake was meant to celebrate both Scardina’s birthday, which is on July 7, and the seventh anniversary of her “transition from male to female.”
Scardina’s attorney, Paula Greisen, said that her client’s case shows that Masterpiece Cakeshop has been engaging in deceptive business practices, accusing the bakery of not being “honest with the public.”
“The dignity of all citizens in our state needs to be honored,” Greisen said in a statement when the case was originally filed last year. “Masterpiece Cakeshop said before the Supreme Court they would serve any baked good to members of the LGBTQ community. It was just the religious significance of it being a wedding cake.”
But in a Thursday hearing, Phillips’ attorneys requested that the Denver court immediately dismiss the lawsuit. Jake Warner, legal counsel with the Alliance Defending Freedom, said that Scardina should “have filed at the court of appeals” instead of filing a new lawsuit at the district court level. Warner claimed the “plaintiff wants to start the case all over and that isn’t fair to Mr. Phillips.”
Representatives with Alliance Defending Freedom, a conservative Christian legal group that also represented Phillips in his case before the Supreme Court, said Scardina’s continued pursuit of the case is intended to “harass” Phillips over his religious beliefs. In a statement shared with NBC News, Kristen Waggoner, senior vice president of ADF’s U.S. legal division, said Phillips is being targeted “because he won’t create custom cakes that express messages or celebrate events in conflict with his conscience.”
“This attorney’s relentless pursuit of Jack was an obvious attempt to punish him for his views, banish him from the marketplace and financially ruin him and his shop,” Warner added.