Jack Phillips, the longsuffering cake artist and owner of Masterpiece Cakeshop in Lakewood, Colorado, recently won his latest case at the Colorado Supreme Court.
On Tuesday, October 9, 2024, Colorado’s highest court issued a ruling dismissing a lawsuit against him on procedural grounds. One could hope that this ruling will bring Phillips’ 12-year-long legal drama to an end, but the court’s failure to rule in Phillips’ favor on the merits of the case leaves him in a tenuous position.
In 2018, Autumn Scardina, a transgender-identifying attorney in Colorado, called his shop. He requested that Phillips create a pink cake with blue icing to celebrate and symbolize a “gender transition” from male to female. Phillips, who believes that God created human beings as either male or female, politely declined. He would not create a cake expressing the message that one’s sex can change for anyone — whether the individual identifies as transgender or not.
Scardina called Phillips on the same day the U.S. Supreme Court announced it would take up Phillips’ first case. That’s not a coincidence. A few months later, Scardina called Phillips’ shop again and requested he make a cake featuring “Satan smoking a joint.” Phillips also declined to create that cake. Scardina has admitted to making these cake requests to “test” Phillips and to “correct the errors of [his] thinking.”
What this reveals is that Scardina is not a persecuted member of an ill-defined minority group. He’s persecuted, intimidated, and harassed Phillips, plain and simple. As everyone knows, you don’t give in to those who seek
