Today, the Colorado Civil Rights Commission abandoned the most recent charges against Jack Phillips, a devout Christian and the owner of Masterpiece Cakeshop. The Commission was attempting to penalize Phillips for refusing to create a custom cake celebrating a gender transition, which violates his religious beliefs on gender and sexuality.
Those charges came in the wake of the high-profile Masterpiece Cakeshop v. Colorado Civil Rights Commission. In that case, Phillips had refused to create a custom cake celebrating a same-sex marriage – again a violation of his Christian faith. The Supreme Court resoundingly ruled in Phillips’ favor, pointing out that the commission had disparaged Phillips’ religious beliefs.
“History will remember the State of Colorado’s sustained and hateful targeting of Jack Phillips as a sad example of a state persecuting people of faith,” Attorney General Paxton said. “A good man lost six and a half years of his life because his perfectly reasonable views fell afoul of our cultural elites, whose rigid secular orthodoxy tolerates no dissent. Thankfully, his courage in the face of spiteful government harassment has demonstrated the resilience of the foundational constitutional guarantee of religious liberty.”
In September 2017, Attorney General Paxton led a 20-state coalition in filing an amicus brief with the Supreme Court in support of Phillips.