Let Them Buy Cake

Do businesses open to the public have a First Amendment right to refuse to provide customized services for same-sex couples' weddings? This book provides the most comprehensive examination of this question to date. It tells the stories of the major same-sex wedding service refusal cases in the U.S., including the Supreme Court cases Masterpiece Cakeshop v. Colorado and 303 Creative v. Elenis. It also tells the story of how the ultra-conservative Christian legal advocacy organization, the Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF), has been orchestrating this litigation for the past twenty years. ADF has represented virtually all the businesses in these lawsuits, going so far as to encourage people to start or expand businesses for the purpose of turning around and suing their home states in an attempt to obtain a right to refuse to provide full and equal service to same-sex couples. Satta argues that same-sex wedding service refusals present genuine competing rights cases-i.e., legal disputes that implicate rights for the parties on both sides. On the one side are the First Amendment religious liberty and free speech rights of the business owners. On the other side are the civil rights of LGBTQ people and the rights of states to enact reasonable legislation aimed at preventing discrimination in businesses open to the general public. Satta provides a careful and accessible introduction to the pertinent areas of First Amendment and civil rights law as well as to the moral considerations relevant for resolving these cases. He argues that U.S. courts have already addressed how to properly balance the competing considerations in the same-sex wedding service refusals in previous cases in which business owners sought a right to engage in race-based and gender-based discrimination in businesses open to the public. In those past cases, the Supreme Court consistently upheld laws requiring full and equal service in businesses open to the public as constitutional, even when such laws put burdens on First Amendment freedoms. Satta argues that considerations of justice and fairness require that the Court resolve the same-sex wedding service refusal cases in the same manner.