Christian baker Cathy Miller was sued in 2018 for refusing to sell a cake for use at a same-sex wedding.
Seven years later, she’s still fighting the accusations of discrimination by citing religious freedom protections.
On Wednesday, Miller was dealt a blow by the California Supreme Court, which announced it won’t reconsider a lower court ruling against the Christian baker.
Miller has now said she will ask the U.S. Supreme Court to take up her case, a move that would put the debate over the rights of religious business owners back in the national spotlight.
Related Supreme Court rulings
If Miller’s lawsuit sounds familiar, it’s because it has much in common with a separate lawsuit out of Colorado that the Supreme Court heard in 2017.
The case centered on Masterpiece Cakeshop and baker Jack Phillips, who was accused of violating Colorado civil rights law when he refused to create a wedding cake for a gay couple.
The Supreme Court ultimately ruled in Phillips’ favor in June 2018, although it didn’t answer whether religious business owners have a right to be exempted from nondiscrimination laws protecting the LGBTQ community.
Instead, the 7-2 ruling was focused on the actions of Colorado officials involved in Phillips’ case. Justices in the majority said the Colorado Civil Rights Commission had disrespected the Christian baker’s beliefs.
Five years later, in June 2023, the Supreme Court again ruled in favor of a religious business owner in a case about the scope of free speech protections.
The business owner, a web designer named Lorie Smith, came to the court for an assurance that she could refuse to work on projects that conveyed messages — like support for same-sex marriage — that contradicted her religious beliefs.
The 6-3 decision, which pitted all of the court’s more conservative justices against its three liberals, said that anti-discrimination laws don’t overrule free speech.
“The First Amendment prohibits Colorado from forcing a website designer to create expressive designs speaking messages with which the designer disagrees,” Justice Neil Gorsuch wrote for the majority.
Cathy Miller’s case
Miller and her attorneys have cited those two Supreme Court decisions to fight the discrimination claims — with limited success.
Miller initially won at the county level but then lost on appeal. In 2022, she won when the case was reconsidered at the county level, as the Deseret News reported at the time, but a California appeals court later overturned that decision.
The rulings partly hinged on the question of whether or not the lesbian couple who tried to purchase a wedding cake from Miller’s bakery, Tastries, were seeking a custom product.
The court that sided with Miller saw the cake order as custom and, because of that, said Miller had a right to refuse to express her support for same-sex marriage in that way and could respect nondiscrimination law by referring the couple to another bakery, as she did.
But the appellate court that ruled against her earlier this year said the couple essentially wanted something off the shelf and that Miller could not treat LGBTQ customers differently than any other customer seeking a standard cake.
In a statement released on Thursday, Miller’s attorneys from Becket, a prominent religious freedom firm, argued that her wedding cakes are custom creations.
“As the United States Supreme Court has made clear twice already, creative professionals like Cathy Miller shouldn’t have to choose between following their faith and practicing their art,” said Adèle Keim, senior counsel at Becket. “California should have dropped its campaign against Cathy years ago and let her design in peace. We plan to appeal this decision to the Supreme Court to defend Cathy’s right to make custom creations that are consistent with her faith.”
If the Supreme Court agrees to hear Miller’s appeal next term, it will reanimate the national debate over faith-based service refusals, which became more common after the Supreme Court legalized same-sex marriage nationwide 10 years ago.
The 2024 American Values Atlas from Public Religion Research Institute found that 58% of U.S. adults oppose allowing small business owners in their state to refuse to provide products or services to gay or lesbian people even if doing so would violate their religious beliefs.
“This percentage has remained consistent since this question was first asked in 2015 (59%),” PRRI reported.