Robert Tracinski explains in a Federalist column why he is not as excited as many of his ideological allies seem to be when it comes to the Supreme Court’s ruling in the Masterpiece Cake case.
Monday, in a resounding 7-2 ruling, the Supreme Court affirmed that the government cannot crush your freedom unless they’re really nice about it.
The court ruled in favor of Jack Phillips, a devout Christian and proprietor of Masterpiece Cakeshop, who had been prosecuted by the Colorado Civil Rights Commission for refusing to bake a cake for a gay wedding. Yet the court ruled in his favor on very narrow, purely procedural grounds that are intended to punt on the underlying issue of religious liberty.
Justice Anthony Kennedy’s majority opinion makes it pretty clear that they’re punting on the substantive issue, because it keeps referring to future rulings in nearly identical cases that might go the other way. …
… I understand the Supreme Court’s habit of keeping its rulings narrow rather than using them as a springboard to speculate about issues beyond the precise scope of a specific case. And I can see the desire to narrow the reasoning of the majority opinion in order to get two left-leaning justices on board and make a ruling in a controversial case seem less partisan. But this ruling is so narrowly construed that it basically remains agnostic on the question of whether government officials can force a religious person to violate his conscience and instead just focuses on how scrupulously polite they are when they violate it. …
… As usual, Justice Clarence Thomas is the only one who penetrates to the central issue, which strikes at the constitutionality of anti-discrimination laws as such. …
… As he also points out, it makes no difference whether you agree with the unorthodox opinions in question, and in fact, the fewer people agree with them, the more they need protection. These sentiments were all boilerplate “liberalism” when I grew up. Now it takes the Supreme Court’s most intransigent conservative to state them.
