Turns down petition

Supreme Court turns down petition from Christian florist in same-sex wedding case

Robert Barnes

The Supreme Court on Friday turned down a petition from a Christian florist who refused to create flower arrangements for a same-sex couple, refusing for now to take another case asking when anti-discrimination laws must give way to religious convictions.

Justices Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito and Neil Gorsuch indicated they would have accepted the case. But it requires four justices for a grant, and that means none of the court's other three conservatives were willing to go along.

A unanimous Washington state Supreme Court found that the florist, Barronelle Stutzman, violated the Washington Law Against Discrimination, a state civil rights law.

In 2013, Stutzman told a friend, Robert Ingersoll, that she would not create arrangements for his wedding to his longtime companion, Curt Freed. Stutzman said she held Ingersoll's hand and said she had to decline his request because of her "relationship with Jesus Christ."

She was fined for violating the state's law that prohibits businesses from discriminating because of sexual orientation. The conservative Alliance for Defending Freedom has been trying to get the Supreme Court to accept the case ever since.

It was seen as a natural follow-up to the court's 2018 decision in Masterpiece Cakeshop v. Colorado Civil Rights Commission, in which the court sided with a baker who would not create a wedding cake for a same-sex couple celebrating their union.

But the court's decision in that case was fact-specific: that commission members had been unfairly hostile to Jack Phillips's religious justifications for his actions. There was no such issue in Stutzman's case.

There are numerous lawsuits across the country concerning wedding vendors - photographers, videographers, calligraphers among them - who don't want to participate in a same-sex marriage.

In the term just completed, the Supreme Court again found a way to dispose of a case raising religious liberty and LBGTQ rights without answering the underlying question.

The justices ruled unanimously that the city of Philadelphia was wrong to end a Catholic group's contract to provide foster-care services because the organization refused to work with same-sex couples.

Chief Justice John Roberts reasoned that because Philadelphia theoretically allows some exceptions to its anti-discrimination policy, the city had violated the Constitution's guarantee of free exercise of religion by not extending one to Catholic Social Services, which screens potential foster-care parents.

Alliance Defending Freedom General Counsel Kristen Waggoner said it was "tragic" the court had passed up Stutzman's case.

"No one should be forced to express a message or celebrate an event they disagree with," Waggoner said in a statement. "A government that can crush someone like Barronelle, who kindly served her gay customer for nearly a decade but simply declined to create art celebrating one sacred ceremony, can use its power to crush any of us regardless of our political ideology or views on important issues like marriage."

Waggoner said she was "confident" the Supreme Court will eventually affirm "the constitutionally protected freedom of creative professionals to live and work consistently with their most deeply held beliefs."

The case is Arlene's Flowers v. Washington