I'm just waiting for someone to argue that it violates their religion to allow black people to sit at the lunch counter and suddenly we're back to the 1960s
It seems like there's a distinction between things here, though. As far as I can tell, no precedent has been set here regarding an individual's right to receive non-speech-based goods or services.
For instance, if you go into a burger shack and the owner doesn't like some trait about you, they still have an obligation to sell you the same burgers they'd sell anyone else. If they have a special bun where they write out in sesame seeds "I endorse your decisions" for some people, though, then they'd be under no obligation to give you that specific bun.
Wasn't the whole cake thing that they wanted custom writing on top? As in, a plain old cake would be fine, but a cake that said "Congratulations on your wedding!" would be speech, as far as I read it.
It's a good point regardless, though, and I don't envy the position of trying to draw the line between what's protected speech and what's not.
Edit: it seems the cake was not requesting custom writing -- custom writing was explicitly protected as free speech in another case. It seems in the analogy of the burger joint, that case was more akin to a burger joint which only sold "I endorse your decisions" buns. Which makes me as glad as ever that I'm not in charge of being the arbiter of what's speech and what's not.
Not for the cake shop in Colorado. The couple just came in and said "we want a wedding cake for our gay wedding" and the owner refused with no other details about the cake discussed. I do however see there have been lawsuits where the writing on cake was at issue (including one in the UK where the request was to write "Support gay marriage") https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Masterpiece_Cakeshop_v._Colora...
Do you have a citation for that? I've also seen reporting that there wasn't an actual couple, and to be honest: I'm having trouble figuring out what's real here.
>> For instance, if you go into a burger shack and the owner doesn't like some trait about you, they still have an obligation to sell you the same burgers they'd sell anyone else
Isn't that only true if the trait they don't like is related to a protected class? Couldn't they refuse to sell burgers to left-handed people, for instance?
I thought the same but the case mentioned down below in the replies brings up an interesting point. The Colorado cake bakery case involved a regular cake, no special decorations on it. Seems we may be going down a slippery slope again.
I don't quite understand the Colorado bakery case, but it seems like it involves a custom cake and the majority opinion was very narrow, intentionally not addressing the broader intersection of freedom of religion, freedom of speech, and anti-discrimination. This website designer case seems to fill that legal gray zone.
It's not unprecedented. In the history of the US, the Bible has been used to justify owning slaves and segregation.
It's a common strategy. Figure out the conclusion you want to draw first, and then look in the Bible for things that justify your viewpoint, glossing over things that don't support or contradict your point of view or shine a bad light on your subsequent behavior.
Farah Alhajeh, 24, was applying for a job as an interpreter when she declined to shake the hand of a male interviewer for religious reasons.
She placed her hand over her heart in greeting instead.
The Swedish labour court ruled the company had discriminated against her and ordered it to pay 40,000 kronor ($4,350; £3,420) in compensation.
Forcing employees to handshake is maybe the most bizarre company policy I've ever seen. I've known multiple people who were uncomfortable with handshaking. I imagine that if this company didn't get in trouble for discriminating against someone because of their religion which prohibited getting touchy touchy with members of the opposite sex, that they would have run into trouble eventually for discriminating against someone with OCD.
I'd give them a pass if being an interpreter actually required you to touch strangers as a function of the job, but give me break.
A lot of restaurants already dislike black patrons, they consider them to be stereotypically "bad patrons". So, I think this will happen much sooner than we'd hope.
For instance, if you go into a burger shack and the owner doesn't like some trait about you, they still have an obligation to sell you the same burgers they'd sell anyone else. If they have a special bun where they write out in sesame seeds "I endorse your decisions" for some people, though, then they'd be under no obligation to give you that specific bun.