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What You Should Know About Jack Phillips' Latest Religious Liberty Case
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Self-described cake artist Jack Phillips is again at the center of the debate over religious freedom, this time as the defendant in a state trial after being sued for declining to design and bake a cake celebrating a gender transition.
"Jack's been in the news for many years," as Jeremy Tedesco, senior counsel at Alliance Defending Freedom, told The Daily Signal, referring to the Colorado Civil Rights Commission's finding that Phillips, a Christian, discriminated against a gay couple when he declined on religious grounds to make a custom cake to celebrate the two men's marriage.
Phillips, whose Masterpiece Cakeshop is in Lakewood, Colorado, took his case all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court.
"In 2018, the Supreme Court said that Colorado had engaged in religious hostility toward Jack. And so he won that case, 7 to 2," says Tedesco, today's guest on "The Daily Signal Podcast."
"But then Colorado turned around right after that and considered another complaint against him, this time based on a gender transition cake that someone asked him to create. Eventually Colorado got the message and dismissed that complaint," Phillips' lawyer says, "but then the private citizen involved in filing that complaint filed a private lawsuit against Jack. And so that's why he's in court now."
Listen to the full interview on “The Daily Signal Podcast” or read a lightly edited transcript below.
We also cover these stories:
- The Biden administration reverses a Trump administration policy on health care and transgender individuals.
- The FBI announces that a criminal gang called DarkSide is behind an attack on the Colonial Pipeline network.
- Weightlifter Laurel Hubbard, a biological male, is on track to compete as a woman in the Summer Olympics in Tokyo.
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