The Colorado Supreme Court has recently granted certification to Masterpiece Cakeshop, a store familiar to the courts with its high-profile legal history, including the notorious 2018 U.S. Supreme Court case Craig v. Masterpiece Cakeshop. This progression comes after the Colorado Court of Appeals held that the bakery creating a pink cake with blue frosting did not classify as protected speech under the First Amendment, thereby rejecting the bakery’s prior contentions.
The issues stemmed from a case identified as Scardina v. Masterpiece, which was the second instance of the store being implicated in a dispute over the propriety of refusing service based on the intended use of the cake. Specifically, on June 26, 2017, the same day the U.S. Supreme Court granted certiorari for the aforementioned case, a customer named Autumn Scardina requested a cake from the shop, disclosing that the cake was to commemorate both her birthday and her transition from male to female. The judgement of Colorado Court of Appeals Judge Timothy J. Schutz from January 26 can be found here.
The reviewers contained within the highest court of Colorado will now deliberate on this recurrent issue of refusal to provide service, which undoubtably brings the topics of First Amendment rights and anti-discriminatory policies to the forefront of legal discussions once again.