The SCOTUS Ruling on Masterpiece Cakeshop Ltd vs Colorado Civil Rights Commission

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The Rationale of the SCOTUS Ruling on Masterpiece Cakeshop Ltd vs Colorado Civil Rights Commission
In 2012, two men walked into Masterpiece Cakeshop to order their marriage cake. The owner, Jack Philips, an expert baker and a staunch Christian turned them down citing religious reasons. The two men left and found another baker who baked their wedding cake but lodged a complaint with Colorado Civil Rights Commission citing that they were discriminated by Philip which was outlawed in Colorado by the Public Accommodations Act. Their complaint resulted in a lawsuit Craig vs Masterpiece Cakeshop ltd. Colorado Civil Rights Commission found Philip guilty of discrimination and ordered him to bake the cake and file quarterly non-discriminatory reports with the commission for two years showing his services were indiscriminative to the LGBTQ community if he wished to continue operating as a baker serving the public. Philip, unsatisfied with the punitive Colorado Civil Rights Commission ruling, filed an appeal with the Colorado court of appeal which upheld the earlier ruling on the mater. Supreme court of Colorado also refused to hear an appeal of the case and Masterpiece Cakeshop ltd petitioned the supreme court of the United States for a review asking the question, ‘Whether applying Colorado's public accommodations law to compel Phillips to create expression that violates his sincerely held religious beliefs about marriage violates the Free Speech or Free Exercise Clauses of the First Amendment.’ In further fillings, Masterpiece Cakeshop ltd requested the supreme court to review the Colorado Public Accommodations Act citing it could be used to discriminate against religion and individually constitutionally mandated rights under the First Amendment. At this point, the case had evolved and it was no longer between the gay couple and a baker, but against a company seeking to be protected from the application of purportedly discriminative state law. Thus, the ruling of the SCOTUS in favor of the Masterpiece Cakeshop ltd was just and it was in the best interest of the public including LGBTQ community since it protected the public from discriminatory statutory legislation that infringes their First Amendment constitutional rights.
Some people like (Glickman, 2017) have cited that the ruling of the supreme court was subjective and the judges selectively related facts to rationalize their conservative beliefs. He argues that the jury overlooked the broader meaning of their ruling and narrowed their rulings on simplistic concepts that allow businesses to have the power to discriminate their customers and treat them as ‘pests.’(Glickman, 2017) also pointed out the subjectivity if the ruling overlooked the distinction of a company owning a business and that of the individual as the judge's references to Philip and the company were synonymous. According to (Glickman, 2017), the overly subjective tone of the jury that clearly does not distinguish a business and the owner as separate entities subvert the course of justice. On the other hand, other people rooted the ruling to be in favor of the LGBTQ community. (Gehring, 2018) is one of them and points out that overlooking the larger context of what the case means to the LGTBQ community and the precedence if sets of ‘lawful discrimination’ is a threat in a country whose societal fabric is strained by extremist ideologies on matters such as LGBTQ rights.  (Gehring, 2018), who is a progressive Catholic, wished the court to dignify the LGBTQ community because he found the case not intrusive to anyone’s religiosity. (Strong, 2018) weighs in and expresses his dissatisfaction of the court of not addressing the pertinent and critical issues of the case such as whether baking of a cake is an expression protected by the First Amendment or whether the religious freedoms of a baker outweigh the state’s public accommodation laws. He expressed his concerns about the larger context of how the ruling will be interpreted by the public showing that the court allows discrimination based on their sexual orientation. After reviewing several pertinent issues of the case, (Strong, 2018) concludes that the ruling will have far-reaching implications in several industries and will set the precedence for other cases related to discrimination of LGBTQ....