In prior columns, academic articles, and my book, “The Indispensable Right, I discuss the never-ending litigation targeting Jack Phillips, the Christian baker who declined to make cakes that violated his religious beliefs. Phillips continues to be the subject of continuing lawsuits despite the Supreme Court upholding his right to decline to make expressive products for ceremonies or celebrations that he finds immoral. Now the Colorado Supreme Court has dismissed an action brought by a transgender lawyer against the cake shop and its owner.
Phillips has been the target of an unrelenting litigation campaign for over a decade.
In 2012, Charlie Craig and David Mullins asked Phillips to make a cake for their same-sex marriage. As a devout Christian, Phillips declined. He would sell any pre-made cakes to customers, but said that he could not morally make a cake for same-sex marriages.
That refusal turned Phillips’ tiny bakery into ground zero for the long-standing battle between religious rights and anti-discrimination laws. The Colorado Civil Rights Commission found that Phillips must make the cakes under the Colorado Anti-Discrimination Act (CADA).
The case went all the way to the Supreme Court in what many of us hoped would be a final resolution of this conflict. I had long criticized the framing of the case (and other cases) under the religious clauses as opposed to taking this as a matter of free speech. In the end, the Supreme Court punted in a maddening 2018 decision that technically ruled in favor of Phillips based on a finding that the Commission showed anti-religious bias against Phillips.
As a result, Phillips was thrown back into an endless grind of litigation as activists targeted his bakery for additional challenges by demanding cakes with other messages that Phillips found offensive.
In 2023, the Supreme Court delivered a major victory for free speech in 303 Creative v. Elenis when it ruled that Lorie Smith, a Christian website designer, could refuse service to a same-sex marriage. Justice Neil Gorsuch wrote “the framers designed the Free Speech Clause of the First Amendment to protect the ‘freedom to think as you will and to speak as you think.’ … They did so because they saw the freedom of speech ‘both as an end and as a means.’”
The decision was not just a vindication for Smith but Phillips. However, Phillips continued to languish in the Colorado system, spending over a decade in non-stop challenges and lawsuits. Because the Supreme Court could not reach a clear resolution, it left Phillips to the continued pursuit of activists targeting his bakery.
The latest dispute began when Autumn Scardina spoke to the wife of Phillips and requested a pink cake with blue frosting to celebrate her gender transition. When the shop declined, Scardina filed an anti-discrimination claim with the Colorado Civil Rights Division (“the Division”) under section 24-34-306, C.R.S. (2024).
In her complaint, Scardina suggested that this was not a targeting of the famous cake shop but merely an effort to get a birthday cake.
In the complaint, Scardina wrote: “Ms. Scardina repeatedly heard Defendants’ advertisements that they were “happy” to sell birthday cakes to LGBT individuals. Hopeful that these claims were true, on June 26, 2017, Ms. Scardina called Masterpiece Cakeshop from Denver to order a birthday cake for her upcoming birthday.”
The shop said that they could make such a cake. However, “Ms. Scardina then informed Masterpiece Cakeshop that the requested design had personal significance for her because it reflects her status as a transgender female.” When the shop noted that it did not make cakes for gender transitions, Scardina insisted that it was for her birthday.
Having established the basis for the lawsuit, she then filed an administrative action. Eventually, however, she jumped from the administrative process into the courts. That would prove the procedural problem for the Colorado Supreme Court.
Scardina prevailed in the lower courts but the case was dismissed by the Colorado Supreme Court on technical grounds.
Justice Melissa Hart wrote in the Colorado Supreme Court’s majority opinion that
“The underlying constitutional question this case raises has become the focus of intense public debate: How should governments balance the rights of transgender individuals to be free from discrimination in places of public accommodation with the rights of religious business owners when they are operating in the public market? We cannot answer that question.”
The most notable aspect of this opinion is that, after a decade, Phillips is still being dragged through the courts despite the fact that the Supreme Court has recognized his free speech right to decline such contracts.
Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF) has defended Phillips and Jake Warner, ADF senior counsel, stated “Enough is enough. Jack has been dragged through courts for over a decade. It’s time to leave him alone.”
It is doubtful that activists will heed that request.
While outlets like The Washington Post have tried to convince Americans that “Democracy Dies in Darkness,” it actually dies in Illinois courthouses where judges whose expertise revolves around parking tickets kick former presidents off ballots.
In the left’s latest attempt at election interference, Cook County Judge Tracie Porter kicked former President Donald Trump off the primary ballot on Wednesday — but put her own order on hold because she knows it won’t stand. Porter ruled Trump must be removed from the state’s March 19 primary ballot but stayed her own order until Friday pending a likely appeal.
Porter said the quiet part out loud, ruling that the board of elections, whichunanimously votedagainst removing Trump from the ballot, “shall remove Donald J. Trump from the ballot for the General Primary Election on March 19, 2024, or cause any votes for him to be suppressed.”
The suit was brought by the left-wing group Free Speech For People, which argued Trump is ineligible based on the 14th Amendment’s insurrection clause. Trump has not been charged with nor convicted of inciting or partaking in insurrection. Still, that hasn’t stopped left-wing activists from attempting to — as Porter would phrase it — suppress voters’ choice for president. The U.S. Supreme Court recently heard oral arguments challenging the Colorado Supreme Court’s decision to remove Trump from the ballot. A similar case is underway in Maine.
Free Speech for People received donor support from the Tides Foundation, which funnels dark money to left-wing organizations intent on changing the way elections are run to boost Democrat chances. The Tides Foundation received more than $22 million from George Soros.
Trump spokesman Steven Cheung lambasted Porter’s decision, saying the campaign will appeal.
“The Soros-funded Democrat front-groups continue to attempt to interfere in the election and deny President Trump his rightful place on the ballot. Today, an activist Democrat judge in Illinois summarily overruled the state’s board of elections and contradicted earlier decisions from dozens of other state and federal jurisdictions,” Cheung said. “This is an unconstitutional ruling that we will quickly appeal.”
Prior to kicking a former president and 2024 front-runner off the ballot, Porter focused on traffic tickets. The state’s Supreme Court appointed Porter in 2021 to be the “At-Large Cook County Circuit Court Judge.” According to the Cook County Democratic Party, Porter has spent time presiding “over minor traffic violations and Class A misdemeanor matters” in the downtown Chicago area.
Judging by Chicago’s ongoing crime crisis, Porter would better serve Illinois residents by continuing to focus on traffic violations — plus gang violence, illegal immigration, and theft — before telling them for whom they’re allowed to vote.
Brianna Lyman is an elections correspondent at The Federalist.
Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson quickly abandoned her “insurrection” questioning on Thursday when former President Donald Trump’s lawyer Jonathan Mitchell pointed out that the term, although used widely by corporate media, Democrats, and Colorado’s lawyers, does not accurately describe the events of the Jan. 6, 2021 Capitol riot.
The exchange occurred during oral arguments for the presidential frontrunner’s challenge to the Colorado Supreme Court’s December 2023 ruling affirming Democrats’ decision to remove Trump from the Centennial State’s 2024 primary ballot.
After going back and forth with Mitchell several times about what constitutes eligibility for constitutional disqualification from holding office, Jackson pivoted to the definition of insurrection.
In a question about “the violent attempts of the petitioner’s supporters in this case to ‘halt the count’ on January 6 qualified as an insurrection as defined by Section 3,” Jackson asked Mitchell to clarify his position on whether or not Trump engaged in “insurrection” during the Capitol riot in 2021.
Jackson clearly sourced her framing from the corporate media and Democrats who, mere minutes into the 2021 Capitol riot, deemed the bedlam a criminal product of Trump.
They immediately lumped the patriotic, law-abiding citizens with concerns about the 2020 election’s legitimacy protesting in D.C. with the people who vandalized Capitol property. Big Tech weaponized this mischaracterization to justify its censorship of Trump’s social media calls for peace. President Joe Biden’s Department of Justice also adopted the sweeping insurrection accusations as its primary motivation to prosecute any and every one of its political enemies in or near the federal building that day.
“I read your opening brief to accept that those events counted as an insurrection but then your reply seemed to suggest that they were not,” Jackson said.
“We never accepted or conceded in our opening brief that this was an insurrection,” Mitchell retorted. “What we said in our opening brief was President Trump did not engage in any act that can plausibly be characterized as insurrection.”
Justice Jackson: "So, your point is that a chaotic effort to overthrow the government is not an insurrection?"
Jonathan Mitchell: "We didn't conceded that it's an effort to overthrow the government either…this was a a riot. It was not an insurrection." pic.twitter.com/dq7gEX9au5
Jackson, unsatisfied with Mitchell’s prompt rejection of her assertion, doubled down.
“So why would it not be?” Jackson pressed. “What is your argument that it’s not? Your reply brief says that it wasn’t because, I think you say, it did not involve an organized attempt to overthrow the government.”
Mitchell conceded “an organized concerted effort to overthrow the government of the United States through violence” is one of the defining factors of an insurrection but said Trump’s actions never met that standard.
“My point is that a chaotic effort to overthrow the government is not an insurrection?” Jackson asked.
“We didn’t concede that it’s an effort to overthrow the government either, Justice Jackson,” Mitchell replied. “None of these criteria were met.”
“This was a riot. It was not an insurrection,” Mitchell concluded. “The events were shameful criminal violence, all of those things, but did not qualify as insurrection as that term is used in Section Three.”
Mitchell continued but was interrupted by Jackson who hurriedly ended her questioning time.
Jordan Boyd is a staff writer at The Federalist and co-producer of The Federalist Radio Hour. Her work has also been featured in The Daily Wire, Fox News, and RealClearPolitics. Jordan graduated from Baylor University where she majored in political science and minored in journalism. Follow her on Twitter @jordanboydtx.
If it wasn’t obvious before now that the left will do anything to stop Donald Trump from winning a second term in the White House, the events of the last few days should leave no doubt in any American’s mind. Democrats, including President Biden, are prepared not only to rig the 2024 election in broad daylight but also to twist the U.S. Constitution and undermine the republic so they can hold on to power.
As most everyone knows by now, an infamous 4-3 majority of the Colorado Supreme Court ruled on Tuesday that voters in their state will not be allowed to cast a ballot for Trump in next year’s presidential election. The court’s outlandish claim is that Trump is ineligible to appear on the ballot because Section 3 of the 14th Amendment says candidates who have “engaged in insurrection” are prohibited from holding public office.
According to the court, which is dominated by left-wing ideologues appointed by Democrat governors (all the judges on the Colorado Supreme Court are Democrats, some are just more radical than others), Trump meets this definition because he “incited” a riot at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. Never mind that Trump has yet to be convicted of a crime associated with Jan. 6 (or any crime for that matter) or that the 14th Amendment doesn’t include the president or vice president in a list of offices to which its Section 3 provision applies. For the leftists on the Colorado Supreme Court, it’s enough to declare Trump an insurrectionist and viola! He’s off the ballot — all in the name of “defending democracy.”
David French called it a “bold, courageous decision,” but setting aside the constitutional/legal debate, consider what it means practically. About 1.4 million Coloradans voted for Trump in 2020. All those voters, if they want to vote for Trump again this time, have been disenfranchised by the court. That’s bad enough, but the left’s strategy here is larger than just one state. Before the ink was dry on the Colorado ruling, California Democrats leapt into action. The lieutenant governor, Eleni Kounalakis, sent a letter to Secretary of State Shirley Weber asking her to “explore every legal option to remove former President Donald Trump from California’s 2024 presidential primary ballot.”
Meanwhile, Special Counsel Jack Smith, who is prosecuting Trump for his alleged role in the Jan. 6 riot, this week asked the U.S. Supreme Court to step in and rule on the case before the lower court issues a ruling. As Byron York noted, Smith’s frantic brief doesn’t state the obvious: “He’s rushing to try Trump so Trump can be convicted and jailed before the election.”
Plenty of smart people have pointed out the glaring problems with the Colorado Supreme Court’s interpretation of Section 3 of the 14th Amendment. Namely, it stipulates Congress must establish a procedure for barring someone from office for engaging in insurrection, which Congress did, twice, first in 1870 and again in 1948. In the latter instance, Congress created a criminal insurrection law, 18 U.S.C. § 2383, which is the enforcement mechanism for Section 3 of the 14th Amendment. The key point here is that Trump has not been charged or convicted under that statute, which means the U.S. Supreme Court will almost certainly overturn the Colorado Supreme Court’s garbage ruling.
But set aside the legal fight because it doesn’t matter to the left. For Biden and the Democrats, this isn’t really a question of what the Constitution does or doesn’t say. This is a question of power and how far they will go to keep it. From the politicized court ruling in Colorado to the four criminal indictments against Trump amounting to 91 felony charges to Biden’s statement last November that he’ll use the Constitution to ensure that Trump “will not take power” and will not “become the next president,” what we have amounts to an open conspiracy to rig the 2024 election by preventing voters from casting a ballot for the likely GOP nominee.
It’s not too much to call this a coup or a color revolution. If Democrats get away with this, we won’t be able to say we have a republic anymore for the simple reason that we won’t have anything like free and fair elections. Democracy in America will be reduced to something like Democracy in Iran or Russia, where only regime-approved candidates are allowed to appear on the ballot.
And don’t think this will end if the U.S. Supreme Court strikes down the Colorado decision. The Democrats will see it as a mere setback, not a defeat — and certainly not a deterrent. When they say, as they have been quite often lately, that Trump will never leave office if he wins next November, or that 2024 will be our last election ever if Trump prevails, they’re really talking about themselves. What they say Trump will do if he becomes president again is what they’re doing right now, before a watching world.
John Daniel Davidson is a senior editor at The Federalist. His writing has appeared in the Wall Street Journal, the Claremont Review of Books, The New York Post, and elsewhere. He is the author of the forthcoming book, Pagan America: the Decline of Christianity and the Dark Age to Come, to be published in March 2024. Follow him on Twitter, @johnddavidson.
Former President Donald Trump lashed out Thursday at President Joe Biden, calling him an insurrectionist. This, after the Colorado Supreme Court ruled that Trump is ineligible for the state’s 2024 Republican primary ballot because of his alleged involvement in the events of Jan. 6, 2021.
“He certainly supported an insurrection,” Biden told reporters Wednesday in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, on his way to a campaign event. “No question about it. None. Zero.”
Colorado’s high court ruled Trump ineligible Tuesday based on Section 3 of the 14th Amendment that disqualifies from office those who engaged in insurrection against the Constitution after taking an oath to support it. Trump has never been charged with insurrection and he is appealing the ruling to the U.S. Supreme Court.
“I’m not an Insurrectionist (‘PEACEFULLY & PATRIOTICALLY’),” Trump posted on Truth Social, referring to his speech Jan. 6 in which he encouraged supporters to “peacefully and patriotically” march to the Capitol building. “Crooked Joe Biden is!!!”
Biden did not share his opinion on the Colorado court ruling but said it was “self-evident” Trump supported an insurrection.
“Certain things are self-evident,” Biden said. “You saw it all. Now, whether the 14th Amendment applies, I’ll let the court make that decision.”
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