Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/17pdf/16-111_j4el.pdf
Page Number: 34

Cite as:  584 U. S. ____ (2018) 

9 

GORSUCH, J., concurring 

with  his  religious  faith.  The  Commission  denied  Mr. 
Phillips that choice, even as it afforded the bakers in Mr.
Jack’s case the choice to refuse to advance a message they
deemed  offensive  to  their  secular  commitments.    That  is 
not neutral. 

Nor  would  it  be  proper  for  this  or  any  court  to  suggest 
that  a  person  must  be  forced  to  write  words  rather  than
create  a  symbol  before  his  religious  faith  is  implicated. 
Civil  authorities,  whether  “high  or  petty,”  bear  no  license
to declare what is or should be “orthodox” when it comes to 
religious  beliefs,  id.,  at  642,  or  whether  an  adherent  has 
“correctly perceived” the commands of his religion, Thomas, 
supra,  at  716.    Instead,  it  is  our  job  to  look  beyond  the 
formality  of  written  words  and  afford  legal  protection  to
any  sincere  act  of  faith.    See  generally  Hurley  v.  Irish-
American  Gay,  Lesbian  and  Bisexual  Group  of  Boston, 
Inc.,  515  U. S.  557,  569  (1995)  (“[T]he  Constitution  looks
beyond  written  or  spoken  words  as  mediums  of  ex- 
pression,”  which  are  “not  a  condition  of  constitutional 
protection”).

The second suggestion fares no better.  Suggesting that
this  case  is  only  about  “wedding  cakes”—and  not  a  wed-
ding cake celebrating a same-sex wedding—actually points
up  the  problem.    At  its  most  general  level,  the  cake  at 
issue in Mr. Phillips’s case was just a mixture of flour and 
eggs;  at  its  most  specific  level,  it  was  a  cake  celebrating 
the same-sex wedding  of Mr. Craig and Mr.  Mullins.  We 
are  told  here,  however,  to  apply  a  sort  of  Goldilocks  rule:
describing  the  cake  by  its  ingredients  is  too  general;  un-
derstanding  it  as  celebrating  a  same-sex  wedding  is  too 
specific; but regarding it as a generic wedding cake is just 
right.  The  problem  is,  the  Commission  didn’t  play  with 
the  level  of  generality  in  Mr.  Jack’s  case  in  this  way.    It 
didn’t  declare,  for  example,  that  because  the  cakes  Mr. 
Jack requested were just cakes about weddings generally, 
and all such cakes were the same, the bakers had to pro-