[gameman144]

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.

[autoexec]

I figure if cake can be protected speech surely a ham on rye with a side of fries can be.

[gameman144]

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.

[autoexec]

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...

[tourmalinetaco]

> Wasn't the whole cake thing that they wanted custom writing on top?

I’m fairly certain it was, it was a wedding cake after all. However people love to drop details and make it worse.

[autoexec]

Not in this case anyway https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Masterpiece_Cakeshop_v._Colora...

There were other lawsuits, such as a case in Ireland that involved writing though

[mcphage]

> I’m fairly certain it was

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.

[tourmalinetaco]

Unfortunately no. I think the problem is there wasn’t one single case, and its been so long I can’t remember specifics to the cases I did hear.

[rufus_foreman]

>> 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?

[s3p]

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.

[vacuity]

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.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Masterpiece_Cakeshop_v._Colora...