A Christian baker is asking the U.S. Supreme Court to end California’s attempts to force her to violate her deeply held religious beliefs.
In her petition filed with the high court on Wednesday, Golden State resident Cathy Miller requested that the justices take up her case and issue a ruling in defense of her First Amendment rights. (At least four justices must agree to hear a case before it can be considered by the full court.)
“All I want is to serve my neighbors as the Gospel of Jesus Christ calls me to without being forced to create messages that violate my beliefs,” Miller said in a statement.
Miller is represented by the Thomas More Society, Becket, and LiMandri & Jonna LLP.
The case first came to fruition in 2017 when Miller, a Christian cake artist, was asked to design a wedding cake for a same-sex couple. After declining to do so due to her Christian beliefs about the sanctity of marriage and referring the couple to another baker, Miller was subjected to “an investigation and legal action by the California Civil Rights Department,” according to Newsweek.
While a California trial court initially sided with Miller in the dispute, a state appeals court later reversed that decision, allowing such lawfare to proceed. Miller later appealed to the California Supreme Court, which declined to hear the case earlier this year.
In petitioning SCOTUS to consider their client’s case, Miller’s attorneys argued that “California’s eight-year civil prosecution of Miller violates both the Free Speech Clause and the Free Exercise Clause” of the First Amendment by forcing her to undertake actions that conflict with her Christian beliefs.
“The Bill of Rights does not leave ‘it open to public authorities to compel [Miller] to utter what is not in [her] mind,’” the filing reads. “And because designing and creating one of the most well known and universal of all wedding symbols involves both Miller’s speech and her religion, both Clauses are implicated.”
The lawyers went on to note recent cases that have come before the Supreme Court “involving religious objections to participating in same sex wedding ceremonies.” They specifically cited the high court’s 2018 Masterpiece Cakeshop, Ltd. v. Colorado Civil Rights Commission and 2023 303 Creative LLC v. Elenis decisions.
Miller’s case bears a striking resemblance to the Masterpiece Cakeshop incident, in which Colorado cake artist Jack Phillips was sued for declining to create a wedding cake for a same-sex couple due to his Christian beliefs. As The Federalist’s Joy Pullmann previously noted, while the Supreme Court ultimately “ruled in Phillips’ favor,” it offered “such a narrow ruling as to allow a venomous transgender activist to immediately haul him back into court after speciously demanding that Phillips bake a transgender celebration cake.”
“The Supreme Court allowed this unconstitutional and anti-freedom regime to proliferate while pretending to check it with weak and ineffectual action,” Pullmann wrote.
The narrowness of the Masterpiece ruling and others was an issue raised by Miller’s attorneys in their Wednesday petition. Writing on their client’s behalf, they emphasized that such decisions “have not yet stopped government attempts to suppress religious objectors,” and encouraged the high court to take up Miller’s case.
“The promise of religious pluralism in this country has always been that ‘every one shall sit in safety under his own vine and fig tree, and there shall be none to make him afraid,’” the petition reads. “This Court should grant review to allow Miller and millions of other religious Americans to lay equal claim to that promise.”
Shawn Fleetwood is a staff writer for The Federalist and a graduate of the University of Mary Washington. He previously served as a state content writer for Convention of States Action and his work has been featured in numerous outlets, including RealClearPolitics, RealClearHealth, and Conservative Review. Follow him on Twitter @ShawnFleetwood
