Hacker News Reader

Comment by blahyawnblah | Hacker News Reader

In reality, how is this different than the cake guy?

It’s not all that different. The argument basically comes down to one of speech and artistic expression. Hear the government is requiring you to support a position with your speech and artistic expression. This is completely different from, say, housing. Refusing housing to someone based on their sexuality is clear discrimination. Refusing to bake a cake, to build a website, to support a position to disagree with, is government coercion of speech. I have absolutely no problem with the same sex marriage, transgender rights, any of that, but I do have a problem with the government forcing speech and expression.

It would be the same sort of coercion when government compels companies to serve black or disabled customers for creative or expressive products, regardless of any deeply held spiritual beliefs about black or disabled populations.

Incorrect. I am not a lawyer, but serving a customer is not a form of speech or expression. Making a website and decorating a cake, are forms of expression and speech.

I'm talking about services provided to the market. Services can naturally include expressive or creative products, or even literally speeches.

Good to know. I guess Google/Facebook/Twitter will stop censoring speech on their services then.

That's an interesting point - if indeed Facebook is providing a service, then using that logic they can't discriminate on providing that service for a protected class engaging in speech if they provide the same service to the public.

If we are going to be consistent on what a service is, and what speech is allowed on a service, this could get really interesting.

The common thread though is this is a business and you can’t discriminate against customers. I’f you were a town crier and offerd the service of walking around town announcing weddings you should be compelled to not discriminate in offering your service despite it being literally your speech. It’s not free, you’re being paid, free is your own time.

By this reasoning, a Jewish baker should be compelled by the government to bake a cake with a swastika on it.

Do you mean more like compelling a supporter of Nazism to bake a Jewish wedding cake? The donning of Nazi political symbols is not a religion, but it could be considered a political position.

How bout compelling a gay owned bakery to bake a cake saying "homosexuality is a sin"? Note GP did not distinguish between political or religious speech, not that there's a material difference IMO.

Correct and it is a good thing, this is america not israel, it's why america is exceptional. Plus god is not real.

So a LGBT cake shop should be forced to write anti-gay bible verses on cakes? Religion is also a protected class.

Splitting services into speech and non-speech isn't a perfect solution, but it seems like a decent compromise compared to the alternatives.

This is correct. In both this case and "cake guy", the parties explicitly stated they had no problem serving homosexual customers, just that they refuse to design certain custom messages/art, this case being same-sex marriage.

The “cake guy” case ended up being decided on case-specific conduct of state officials, not the merits of the law, leaving the fundamental question of the federal constititutional validity of the state law to a future case.

This is (provided no case-specific issue provides an excuse to avoid that issue) potentially that future case.

Also potentially not; the Supreme Court has been deflecting cases raising similar issues since Masterpiece Cakeshop, and I don't see any change (e.g., a conflict between the Circuit Courts on the issue) that would be a strong basis for believing that would change, though its also possible that the number of such cases or change on the Court could be sufficient to motivate taking this case.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com