Free Speech: Colorado Cakeshop Case Is A Win For Artists Of All Stripes

This is the fifth in a series of articles from Alliance Defending Freedom on the state of free speech in America today. October 21 to 27 is National Free Speech Week.

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For more than a decade now, activists and government officials have been threatening to separate something indivisible: artistic expression from the artists who create it.

These relentless threats to artistic freedom have been grounded on the idea that artists, whatever their chosen milieu, can be compelled to express messages that violate their personal beliefs. Those who refuse to do so — no matter how courteous, kind, compassionate, or respectful they are to those demanding their expression — are regarded by those activists and officials as fair game to haul in to court for judgment.

This coercion forces artists to create deeply personal works based on an ideologically prescribed script — or else.

Or else … what?

Ask Jack Phillips, the cake artist from Colorado whose polite decision 12 years ago not to create a custom cake expressing a view of marriage he doesn’t believe has precipitated death threats to himself, protests and boycotts, the loss of most of his staff, and continuous legal proceedings.

Phillips is hardly the only cake artist in Colorado; he’s not even the only cake artist in his Denver suburb. And like many Americans, he holds to certain sincere biblical beliefs about marriage that have been — and continue to be — the consensus of countless people around the world.

But they are not the chosen beliefs of a coterie of activists and state officials, who for more than a decade have used the power of the courts to pressure Phillips and other Colorado artists to either rethink or set aside their convictions – or face punishment.

Last week though, the Colorado Supreme Court ruled in Phillips’ favor. The court dismissed another case against Phillips that threatened his freedom to create consistent with his beliefs because the attorney who filed the case did not follow the right process. Phillips is now an undefeated, three-for-three, in defending his free-speech rights.

Phillips’ most recent victory comes a little more than a year after the U.S. Supreme Court’s historic ruling last year in 303 Creative v. Elenis. In that case, Colorado threatened the First Amendment rights of Denver graphic artist Lorie Smith and her design studio, 303 Creative — under the same law the state and others have used to target Phillips — by compelling her to create custom websites that celebrated a view of marriage she disagrees with. The Supreme Court said that compulsion violated the First Amendment and reaffirmed the bedrock principle that the government cannot force Americans to express views that conflict with their own.

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Smith and Phillips share another crucial principle: they serve and collaborate with anyone — including people who hold different views and beliefs from their own. But there is, and always has been, a difference between treating every individual with respect, and promoting everything they request to be said. Being part of a community means showing one another genuine courtesy and compassion. Being part of a free society means letting others decide for themselves what they will believe and express.

That’s why, as Smith says, her win is a win for all Americans — those who share her faith convictions, and those who don’t. It’s a win, especially, for artists whose gifts are inseparable from their individuality, and whose artistic skills cannot be, and should not be, conformed to any governmental mandate.

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Jake Warner is senior counsel for appellate advocacy with Alliance Defending Freedom (@ADFLegal).

The view expressed in this piece are those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.