Advancing American Freedom (AAF), former Vice President Mike Pence’s policy group, filed an amicus curiae brief to the U.S. Supreme Court in support of an Oregon baker who was penalized by the state for standing by his Christian faith and not baking a wedding cake for a lesbian marriage.
Earlier in the year, the Oregon Court of Appeals, for a second time, upheld a ruling by the state’s civil rights division that found the owners of Sweet Cakes by Melissa unlawfully discriminated against a lesbian couple in 2013 by not baking their wedding cake.
As Oregon Public Broadcasting explained:
The Bureau of Labor and Industry found in 2015 that Aaron Klein engaged in illegal discrimination, and ordered him to pay $135,000 in damages – money the Kleins raised handily via a crowdfunding campaign. Two years later, the Oregon Court of Appeals agreed that discrimination had taken place.
Then the U.S. Supreme Court got involved. In a 2018 decision, the court tossed out a Colorado ruling against a baker who refused to serve a gay couple on religious grounds, finding the state had shown bias against his religion while making its decision. The federal justices then ordered the Oregon Court of Appeals to take a fresh look at the Sweet Cakes case, in light of the new opinion.
Most notably, the appeals court’s latest ruling upholds the state’s original finding that religious freedoms do not protect business owners from anti-discrimination laws.
In the amicus brief urging the Supreme Court to review this case, AAF attorney J. Marc Wheat emphasized the importance of religious freedom in the United States.
Wheat wrote:
Americans have a long tradition in cultivating religious liberty by embracing exemptions from generally applicable laws. Even stretching back to the colonial period, in the generations leading up to the founding generation that authored the Declaration of Independence, the Articles of Confederation, the Northwest Ordinance, and the Constitution of the United States, the seedbeds of tolerance and respect for religious commitments were being cultivated.
Wheat also argued the Supreme Court erred in its ruling in Oregon v. Smith, which upended nearly 40 years of religious liberty law and held that generally applicable laws not targeting specific religious practices do not violate the First Amendment’s Free Exercise.
Instead, Wheat argued the Supreme Court should revert back to the previous rule it issued in Sherbert v. Verner, which held that a law imposing a substantial burden on the exercise of religion must be narrowly tailored to serve a compelling government interest.
“Smith simply does not offer clear guidance to government actors to protect faithful objectors if a law of general applicability comes into conflict with people of faith like the bakers,” Wheat wrote.
“What would replace Smith on the question of religious exemptions from generally applicable laws? Sherbert should be restored as the controlling decision, which had been in place for nearly four decades when Smith was decided,” Wheat continued.
“The bakers could have avoided nearly a decade of litigation and the loss of their business had there been clearer guidance to government functionaries on which kind of professions or services that by their very nature present themselves as an admixture of commerce, free speech, freedom of association would present free exercise challenges to the application of Smith,” Wheat added.
COMMENTS
Please let us know if you're having issues with commenting.