A Christian baker wouldn’t make a gender transition cake. The Colorado Supreme Court just ruled in his favor

Jack Phillips scored a key legal victory in front of the Colorado Supreme Court on Tuesday, more than 10 years after his battle over wedding cakes, religion and LGBTQ rights first began.
The Colorado court decided to dismiss a case brought by someone who had asked the Colorado baker to make a cake celebrating her gender transition. Phillips declined because of his religious beliefs.
The conflict over the gender transition cake originated in 2017, just as the U.S. Supreme Court was preparing to hear a separate but closely related case on Phillips’ refusal to sell cakes for same-sex weddings.
The Supreme Court ruled in favor of the Colorado baker in that case in June 2018, and now the Colorado Supreme Court has, too. The Colorado court said that Autumn Scardina, the woman who requested the gender transition cake, had not filed the lawsuit correctly.
“Enough is enough. Jack has been dragged through courts for over a decade. It’s time to leave him alone,” said one of Phillips’ attorneys, Jake Warner with the Alliance Defending Freedom, in a statement released Tuesday.
The Supreme Court’s 2018 ruling in favor of Phillips left the door open for additional legal challenges, since it didn’t answer overarching questions about what should win out when religious freedom protections conflict with nondiscrimination protections for members of the LGBTQ community.
Instead, the ruling was focused on Colorado officials’ treatment of the Colorado baker. The court ruled 7-2 that officials had been unlawfully hostile about Phillips’ religious beliefs.
The Supreme Court again ruled in favor of a religious business owner in June 2023 in a cased called 303 Creative. But that decision also didn’t fully resolve conflict over Phillips’ cakes, since it focused on business owners’ free speech rights and didn’t clearly define what types of products should be seen as expressive.
Nevertheless, Phillips’ attorney team felt that the 303 Creative ruling supported the Colorado baker’s position in the gender transition cake battle and kept fighting for that case to be dismissed, as it now has been.
Like the Supreme Court in 2018, the Colorado Supreme Court on Tuesday did not address key questions about balancing LGBTQ rights with religious freedom.
Instead, the 6-3 decision was based on procedural grounds. The majority believed that Scardina “had not exhausted her options to seek redress through another court before filing her lawsuit,” per ABC News.
Scardina’s attorney was critical of the decision in an interview with ABC News, noting he’s evaluating legal options.
The Deseret News spoke with Phillips last year about his 2018 victory in front of the Supreme Court and his ongoing legal battle.
He said he was hopeful that all Americans would understanding what he was fighting for.
“I love serving everyone, but I can’t create or express every message. Whether or not you agree with my message choices, I think every American should be on board with the fact that the government should not force me to speak a message I don’t agree with or tell me that I can’t speak a message I want to share,” Phillips said.