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Page Number: 33.0

8 

MASTERPIECE CAKESHOP, LTD. v. COLORADO 

CIVIL RIGHTS COMM’N
 
GORSUCH, J., concurring
 

our  colleagues  save  the  Commission.    It  is  no  answer,  for 
example,  to  observe  that  Mr.  Jack  requested  a  cake  with
text on it while Mr. Craig and Mr. Mullins sought a cake
celebrating  their  wedding  without  discussing  its  decora-
tion,  and  then  suggest  this  distinction  makes  all  the  dif-
ference.  See post, at 4–5, and n. 4 (GINSBURG, J., dissent-
ing).  It  is  no  answer  either  simply  to  slide  up  a  level  of
generality  to  redescribe  Mr.  Phillips’s  case  as  involving 
only  a  wedding  cake  like  any  other,  so  the  fact  that  Mr. 
Phillips  would  make  one  for  some  means  he  must  make 
them for all.  See ante, at 2–3, and n. (KAGAN, J., concur-
ring).  These  arguments,  too,  fail  to  afford  Mr.  Phillips’s 
faith neutral respect.

Take  the  first  suggestion  first.    To  suggest  that  cakes 
with words convey a message but cakes without words do 
not—all  in  order  to  excuse  the  bakers  in  Mr.  Jack’s  case 
while penalizing Mr. Phillips—is irrational.  Not even the 
Commission  or  court  of  appeals  purported  to  rely  on  that
distinction.  Imagine Mr. Jack asked only for a cake with a
symbolic  expression  against  same-sex  marriage  rather 
than  a  cake  bearing  words  conveying  the  same  idea. 
Surely  the  Commission  would  have  approved  the  bakers’ 
intentional  wish  to  avoid  participating  in  that  message 
too.  Nor  can  anyone  reasonably  doubt  that  a  wedding
cake without words conveys a message.  Words or not and 
whatever the exact design, it celebrates a wedding, and if 
the  wedding  cake  is  made  for  a  same-sex  couple  it  cele-
brates a same-sex wedding.  See 370 P. 3d, at 276 (stating 
that  Mr.  Craig  and  Mr.  Mullins  “requested  that  Phillips
design  and  create  a  cake  to  celebrate  their  same-sex  wed-
ding”) (emphasis added).  Like “an emblem or flag,” a cake 
for a same-sex wedding is a symbol that serves as “a short 
cut  from  mind  to  mind,”  signifying  approval  of  a  specific 
“system, idea, [or] institution.”  West Virginia Bd. of Ed. v. 
Barnette,  319  U. S.  624,  632  (1943).    It  is  precisely  that 
approval that Mr. Phillips intended to withhold in keeping