California court rules against baker in revival of same-sex wedding cake dispute

[Jessica_Rose]

California court rules against baker in revival of same-sex wedding cake disputes

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/california-court-rules-against-baker-in-revival-of-same-sex-wedding-cake-disputes/ar-AA1z07ku?ocid=hpmsn&cvid=596a13b7a8fd49f1be5648fc9380665d&ei=9

Story by JEANNE KUANG (13 Feb 2025)

A Kern County baker violated California law when she refused to sell a cake to a lesbian couple for their wedding...

The case stemmed from the marriage of Eileen and Mireya Rodriguez-Del Rio, who visited Tastries bakery in Bakersfield to buy a cake for their wedding in August 2017.

Miller is a devout Christian who also refuses to make cakes depicting marijuana use or sexual imagery. She later told the courts she has a bakery policy stating that "wedding cakes must not contradict God's sacrament of marriage between a man and a woman."

The couple spoke with an employee and selected a pre-designed plain, white, three-tiered cake that the bakery often sells for various celebrations including birthdays and baby showers, according to court filings. When the couple returned with friends and family for a tasting the following week, Tastries' owner Catharine Miller refused to sell the cake upon learning it would be served at a same-sex wedding.

The judges ruled Miller's policy is not neutral because it could only apply to customers on the basis of their sexual orientation. They also ruled that reproducing a plain cake with no writing or decorations that Miller would have sold to anyone else does not count as being forced to express support for a same-sex wedding.

"Drawing the contours of protected speech to include routinely produced, ordinary commercial products as the artistic self-expression of the designer is unworkably overbroad," the judges wrote.