Baking Case Quotes

The following are three quotes from each of the lawyers from the oral argument that stood out to me.

Waggoner:

"Mr. Chief Justice, and may it please the Court: The First Amendment prohibits the government from forcing people to express messages that their violate religious convictions.

Yet the Commission requires Mr. Phillips to do just that, ordering him to sketch, sculpt, and hand-paint cakes that celebrate a view of marriage in violation of his religious convictions."

This very first quote is important because Waggoner is using the First Amendment as a defense.

"Well, this Court has recognized in Hurley as well as in other decisions that artistic expression doesn't need to include words and symbols to express a message or to be protected speech."

"Certainly not all cakes would be considered speech, but in the wedding context, Mr. Phillips is painting on a blank canvas.

He is creating a painting on that canvas that expresses messages, and including words and symbols in those messages."

Fancisco:

"Is the thing that's being regulated something we call protected speech? I think the problem for my friends on the other side is that they think the question doesn't even matter.

So they would compel an African-American sculptor to sculpt a cross for a Klan service -- "

"So the answer to your hypothetical is, as this Court has repeatedly said, not everything that expresses a message is speech."

"And I would submit, just to finish up, that if you were to disagree with our basic principle, putting aside the line about whether a cake falls on speech or non-speech side of the line, you really are envisioning a situation in which you could force, for example, a gay opera singer to perform at the Westboro Baptist Church just because that opera singer would be willing to perform at the National Cathedral. And the problem is when you force somebody not only to speak but to contribute that speech to an expressive event to which they are deeply opposed, you force them to use their speech to send a message that they fundamentally disagree with. And that is at the core of what the First Amendment protects our citizenry against."

Yarger:

"Your Honor, if -- if -- if there was evidence that the entire proceeding was begun because of a -- an intent to single out religious people, absolutely, that would be a problem."

"Yes, Mr. Chief Justice. The facts of that case are that someone walked into a bakery and wanted a particular cake with particular messages on it that that bakery wouldn't have sold to any other customer. Mr. Phillips would not be required to sell a cake to a gay couple that he wouldn't sell to his other customers."

"I urge you to read the legislative history that culminated in literally 10 years of debate about how to deal with this question. And what the legislature decided after hearing from the faith community, after making an exception for places of worship and doing -- making other exceptions decided we can't make exceptions here for same-sex people who deserve the same protections if we wouldn't make those same exceptions for discrimination based on race and sex and -- and religion."