Jack Phillips was at the Colorado Court of Appeals earlier this week for the case known as Scardina v. Masterpiece Cakeshop, in which his attorneys at Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF) are asking that Phillips' First Amendment rights be upheld.
This follows a trial court's ruling from last year that punished Phillips for declining a customer's request to design a custom cake celebrating a so-called gender transition. He testified that he did not think someone could change genders and that he would not celebrate "somebody who thinks they can."
"This case is going in the shadows of the 303 Creative case, which is being heard by the U.S. Supreme Court this fall," says ADF attorney Jonathan Scruggs. "It involves a graphic artist from Colorado, Lorie Smith."
Both Phillips and Smith work in the blue state with a so-called public accommodation law, which means the Christian business owners are expected by law to ignore their personal religious beliefs on behalf of homosexual customers or risk running afoul of state government.
Scruggs says the appeals court could possibly be waiting for the U.S. Supreme Court's decision in that case, but either way, ADF expects a decision in Phillips' case within the next couple of months.
Meanwhile, Scruggs reports that Phillips is being harassed.
"This activist attorney, Autumn Scardina, called up Jack and asked Jack to create a custom pink and blue cake celebrating a gender transition," he reports. "That's something the trial court even acknowledged. This attorney has been harassing Jack for … numerous years, emailing Jack, calling him a bigot and a hypocrite, and asking Jack to create a custom cake depicting Satan smoking marijuana."
So as their client endures yet another legal battle, ADF is asking people to pray for Phillips, whom the faith-based legal firm is "proud to represent."
"He's been in litigation for almost 10 years," Scruggs notes. "At the end of the day, he's won his prior attempts in court -- at the U.S. Supreme Court and then once before at a lower court -- and we're hopeful that he'll win this case again."
