Colorado baker Jack Phillips is back in court again, facing another lawsuit. For more than eight years, LGBT activists have targeted him for his beliefs. This time, he’s being sued for declining to bake a cake celebrating a transgender transition.
Phillips is a Christian and his religious beliefs prevent him from offering his services to promote LGBTQ ideology.
CBN News previously reported that Phillips won a major victory in the U.S. Supreme Court, but his legal opponents have refused to give up their direct targeting of him. His latest case went before a state judge on Monday in Denver.
Autumn Scardina tried to order the cake on the same day in 2017 that the Supreme Court said it would hear Phillips’ same-sex wedding cake case.
Scardina, who’s an attorney, asked for a cake that was blue on the outside and pink on the inside in honor of her gender transition.
During a 2018 interview with CBN News, Phillips said he could not make the cake because it violated his constitutionally protected beliefs.
“The Bible teaches that God made male and female, and I believe that we don’t get to choose that, and we don’t get to change that, and the government shouldn’t be able to compel me to celebrate somebody who is trying to do that – celebrate that by creating a cake for this occasion,” he explained.
And Phillips’ lawyer argued that his refusal to make the cake was about its message, not discriminating against Scardina.
“The message would be that he agrees that a gender transition is something to be celebrated,” said Attorney Sean Gates.
Prior to suing Phillips, Scardina pressed charges against him with the state and the Colorado Civil Rights Commission agreed that Phillips had treated her unfairly. Phillips then filed a federal lawsuit against Colorado, saying the state was pursuing a “crusade to crush” him with the latest complaint.
Lawyers for the state and Phillips agreed to dismiss both cases, permitting Scardina to proceed with a lawsuit independently.
Jim Campbell, senior counsel at Alliance Defending Freedom, said the recent case against Phillips is another attempt to persecute him over his Christian faith.
“This latest lawsuit looks like yet another desperate attempt to harass cake artist Jack Phillips,” Campbell said. “And it stumbles over the one detail that matters most: Jack serves everyone; he just cannot express all messages or celebrate all events through his custom cakes.”
For years, Phillips has been driven away from his work because he wants to live according to his faith.
“The Supreme Court made it clear that Colorado can’t treat me worse than other cake artists because of my religious beliefs,” Phillips declared. “Colorado just seemed to be looking for opportunities to punish me for my faith.”