High court avoids ruling in Oregon same-sex wedding case

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Supreme Court is throwing out an Oregon court ruling against bakers who refused to make a wedding cake for a same-sex couple.

The justices’ action Monday keeps the high-profile case off the court’s election-year calendar and orders state judges to take a new look at the dispute between the lesbian couple and the owners of a now-closed bakery in the Portland area.

The high court’s brief order directs appellate judges in Oregon to consider last term’s Supreme Court ruling in favor of a baker from Colorado who would not make a cake for a same-sex wedding. The court ruled that baker Jack Phillips was subjected to anti-religious bias in the Colorado Civil Rights Commission’s determination that he violated state anti-discrimination in refusing to bake the couple’s wedding cake. The Oregon appellate ruling came before the court’s decision in Phillips’ case.

The larger issue weighing the rights of LGBT people against the religious objections of merchants remains unresolved. Another dispute involving a florist from Washington state who would not create flower arrangements for a same-sex wedding is headed to the Supreme Court.

The Oregon case had been in Supreme Court limbo for months, sometimes signaling behind-the-scenes negotiation over what to do. The case involves bakers Melissa and Aaron Klein, who paid a $135,000 judgment to the couple for declining to create a cake for them in 2013.

The dispute began when Rachel Bowman-Cryer went to the Gresham bakery, Sweet Cakes by Melissa, with her mother in January 2013. They met with Aaron Klein, who asked for the date of the ceremony and the names of the bride and groom.

When told there was no groom, Klein said he was sorry but the bakery did not make cakes for same-sex weddings. According to documents from the case, Rachel and her mother left the shop, but returned a short time later. As Rachel remained in the car, in tears, her mother went in to speak with Klein.

The mother told Klein she had once thought like him, but her “truth had changed” when she had two gay children. Klein responded by quoting Leviticus: “You shall not lie with a male as one lies with a female; it is an abomination.”

The justices already have agreed to decide in their election-year session whether federal civil rights law protects people from job discrimination because of their sexual orientation or gender identity.

The court took over three months, discussing the case behind closed doors, to render Monday’s summary decision. The timing suggests the justices were debating different ways of resolving the case, short of putting it on the calendar for next term.

It was a summary order of two sentences with no noted dissents.

“Today’s move to send the case back to the Oregon state courts is something of a surprise, because this case had been pitched all along as raising the broader constitutional question that the Justices ducked last year in the Masterpiece Cakeshop case,” said Steve Vladeck, CNN Supreme Court analyst and professor at the University of Texas School of Law.

“By asking the state courts to reconsider their ruling in light of Masterpiece Cakeshop, the Justices are, in effect, asking the Oregon courts if a similarly narrow basis is available for resolving this case — even though the parties have framed the case as presenting a broader conflict between the constitutional rights to religious liberty and same-sex marriage.”

Vladeck added: “That it took the court this long to reach a result that, in retrospect, is a pretty straightforward compromise, suggests that there was detailed back-and-forth behind the scenes.”

“It’s not hard to imagine some justices wanting to take this case now, others wanting to deny it altogether, and today’s result emerging only over time as a middle ground that they could all endorse — at least publicly. And it’s hard to imagine that Chief Justice Roberts wasn’t at the heart of such a compromise,” he said.