Wednesday, December 06, 2017

Wedding Cake and the U.S. Constitution

NPR’s Nina Totenberg has two reports about an important case argued this week before the U.S. Supreme Court which revolves around a wedding cake. A same-sex couple asked a baker to make a cake for their wedding and he refused, saying it was against his religious principles. The constitutional issue that brought the incident to the Court are the baker’s First Amendment free speech right vs. a Colorado anti-discrimination law. This case is important because of the effect that a decision in favor of the baker could have in other situations, so there were many hypothetical questions posed by the justices.
Totenberg’s report just before the argument can be found here. 6 min 31 sec, transcript available.
The second, just after the oral argument, can be found here. 5 min 58 sec, transcript available.
The name of the case is Masterpiece Cakeshop, Ltd. v. Colorado Civil Rights Commission. The recording of the oral arguments is now available on the Court's web site. The transcript is available here. You can find some in-depth discussion of the case here on the SCOTUSblog web site.