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Page Number: 13

10 

MASTERPIECE CAKESHOP, LTD. v. COLORADO 

CIVIL RIGHTS COMM’N
 
Opinion of the Court 

believe that a given group is the target of discrimination, 
and  they  do  not,  as  a  general  matter,  violate  the  First  or 
Fourteenth Amendments”).

When  it  comes  to  weddings,  it  can  be  assumed  that  a
member  of  the  clergy  who  objects  to  gay  marriage  on 
moral  and  religious  grounds  could  not  be  compelled  to
perform the ceremony without denial of his or her right to
the  free  exercise  of  religion.    This  refusal  would  be  well 
understood  in  our  constitutional  order  as  an  exercise  of 
religion, an exercise that gay persons could recognize and 
accept  without serious diminishment to their own dignity
and worth.  Yet if that exception were not confined, then a 
long  list  of  persons  who  provide  goods  and  services  for 
marriages  and  weddings  might  refuse  to  do  so  for  gay 
persons,  thus  resulting  in  a  community-wide  stigma  in-
consistent  with  the  history  and  dynamics  of  civil  rights
laws  that  ensure  equal  access  to  goods,  services,  and 
public accommodations.

It  is  unexceptional  that  Colorado  law  can  protect  gay 
persons, just as it can protect other classes of individuals, 
in  acquiring  whatever  products  and  services  they  choose
on  the  same  terms  and  conditions  as  are  offered  to  other 
members of the public.  And there are no doubt innumera-
ble  goods  and  services  that  no  one  could  argue  implicate 
the  First  Amendment.    Petitioners  conceded,  moreover, 
that  if  a  baker  refused  to  sell  any  goods  or  any  cakes  for 
gay  weddings,  that  would  be  a  different  matter  and  the
State  would  have  a  strong  case  under  this  Court’s  prece-
dents  that  this  would  be  a  denial  of  goods  and  services 
that  went  beyond  any  protected  rights  of  a  baker  who 
offers  goods  and  services  to  the  general  public  and  is
subject  to  a  neutrally  applied  and  generally  applicable 
public accommodations law.  See Tr. of Oral Arg. 4–7, 10. 

Phillips  claims,  however,  that  a  narrower  issue  is  pre-
sented.  He argues that he had to use his artistic skills to
make an expressive statement, a wedding endorsement in