Dems back same-sex couple in wedding cake case

Congressional Democrats are pushing the Supreme Court to protect lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people from discrimination.

Rep. Sean Patrick Maloney (New York) led a “friend of the court” brief signed by 36 senators and 175 House members in support of the same-sex couple at the center of a legal battle with a Colorado baker who refused to make a cake for their wedding.

In the case, scheduled for arguments before the Supreme Court on Dec. 3, the baker claims he should not be forced under the state’s anti-discrimination laws to make a cake for an event that contradicts his religious beliefs.

Rep. Mark Takano (D-Calif.), who co-chairs the Congressional LGBT Equality Caucus, said the case isn’t about merely affirming one couple’s right to buy a cake. 

“What it seeks to affirm is every person’s right to be treated with dignity and respect in America,” he said Wednesday morning in front of the Capitol while speaking at a press conference to announce the brief.

“A court ruling in favor of the cake shop would unleash a flood of discrimination from those who want to insult and exclude any group of vulnerable people. It would offer legal cover for a broad range of malicious practices while rendering the states and local governments helpless to prevent them.”

In the 37-page brief, the Democrats claim that under the baker’s theory, a wide range of activities that federal public accommodation laws sought to outlaw could be permitted.

“Indeed the very reasons once cited for the pervasive exclusion of African Americans from places of public accommodation – that to serve members of the Negro race in business establishments would violate sacred religious beliefs – could be cited in support of conduct invoking this exemption,” they write. 

The Democrats’ brief comes about two months after Republicans filed a brief in support of the baker’s claim that his wedding cake designs are an expressive form of speech protected under the First Amendment.

Maloney, however, said people who are engaged in commercial activity or public accommodations can’t discriminate on the basis of race, religion or gender.

“So why now would it be acceptable when engaged in the same type of commercial activity to discriminate against LGBT people?” he asked.

“At the end of the day that’s what this case is about. Are we going to expand the notion of religious expression so it can encompass discrimination in this area when we would never allow it in any other area?”