this post was submitted on 01 Jul 2023
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Malicious Compliance
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Quick side note: you are within your rights to refuse service based on political affiliation full stop -- it's not protected under the equal protections clause.
That being said, the issue is not about denying service full-stop, but the right to refuse expression of values you find to be wrong. Believe it or not, these cases are important for everyone and guarantees that the state can't force you to create messaging in support of (i.e. endorse, which is a form of speech) something you disagree with.
It's not granting the right to discriminate. It's protecting your first amendment right to not be compelled to engage in speech you disagree with.
For example, say I go to a bakery run by devout Muslims and request a cake that depicts a cross with the phrase "only through Jesus may you find eternal life" underneath. That baker may be uncomfortable with the idea of creating that design as it not only goes against their own sincerely held beliefs, but may conflict with some negative views they may hold of Christians or Jesus (or even the particular denomination of the customer).
That Muslim baker has every right to refuse the design of the cake on free speech grounds. Religion is a protected class in the equal protections clause, so the Christian may feel like they're being discriminated against, but it's the message (which is considered to be speech) and not the individual being a Christian causing the issue.
That Muslim baker cannot blanket-refuse any Christians from buying any cakes. If that Christian customer instead asks for a blank cake that they'll decorate themselves, the baker must sell it to them or else they are violating the equal protections clause. In that case, service is being refused based on the traits of the customer rather than on the particular message being expressed on the cake.
It's silly and I think people would be better off just accepting the work and taking the money. If I was aware of a business that made cakes, websites, whatever -- but refused certain designs based on their personal views, I would simply discontinue any further support of them. I'd prefer a business who puts their own shit aside and serves whomever wants to pay them.. but to compel them to suck it up and either compromise on their views or close up shop is directly contradictory to one of the most important rights we recognize here -- to speak freely and without cohersion from the state.
The business owner isn't doing anything wrong with their signs, but they're completely missing the point of the decision and comes off as a bit silly.
What you described was not the actual outcome of the ruling.
The wedding website designer did not give them a website with no mention of being gay, that they could fill in themselves. The website designer was allowed to fully refuse them any kind of website at all. Just like refusing a blank wedding cake because the couple is gay.
The justification of the decision was not in good faith. It stepped away over the bounds of protecting against compelled speech. And they deserve to feel the consequences.
The whole goddamn case was not in good faith.
The supposed customer for a gay wedding website turned out to actually be a married straight dude.
If the wedding designer has a "blank wedding site" package premade and refused to sell it to them then I don't think that's right. But if all of the websites are bespoke designs where the designer must create something for the couple, it's fuzzy.
Personally, I don't know. There is, and should be, a line between personal life and work life. But depending on what you do for a living, the line can be a thin one or a thick one.
For example, if I churn out hundreds of identical 3D printed characters and sell them at an open-air market, I shouldn't be allowed to single out a customer and refuse business just because I don't like the look of them. But if I'm a graphic artist, I shouldn't be compelled to draw something that I find objectionable. Eg: I might be a woman who has been sexually abused in the past, and someone wants a sexually graphic depictions of a sexual assault (like the Guns 'N' Roses "Appetite for Destruction" cover).
Those examples are easy to comprehend because they're extremes. The difficulty in interpreting the outcome of the case is trying to bring the examples closer to the center.
Can you refuse to sell handpainted greetings to someone you don't like? No. It doesn't matter that it's a creative endeavour. If you created the product without coercion, and are now selling them at a stall in your local town, it's not ok to refuse a simple transaction because you don't like the buyer. What if you also offer a service of writing a message in fancy calligraphy on the inside? Can you refuse to write something you find objectionable? I think so.
I don't think it comes down to who your customer is. I think it comes down to what you're being asked to do.
Edit: lol, what a typo. Thanks swype keyboard!
Someone else compared being gay to being racist, and now you're comparing being gay to sexual assault.
These are disingenuous comparisons at best, dangerously homophobic at worst.
WAT. I was giving extreme examples to illustrate that personal opinions sometimes have zero effect on your work, and sometimes they really really affect your work. And I specifically called out the fact that they were extreme examples:
How the hell was that comparing being gay to sexual assault? How come you didn't use the other example and accuse me of comparing being gay to 3d printing?
A sensible and reasonable analogy would be interracial marriage.
Should racist wedding business owners be able to refuse serving interracial marriages, on the basis of they don't believe in interracial marriage?
In theory yes, but what's going to happen now, is 2 obviously gay men will go to that Muslim baker and ask for blank cake they will decorate themselves and Muslim will ask them to leave.
And if that was the case and they wanted to pursue their legal options, they could sue the baker.
They could. And theyll probably have too. The problem with this law is it really sets the tone and reinforces peoples shitty views.
I definitely agree that stupid people are stupid, and they will either intentionally or unintentionally misunderstand the ruling and skew it to their messed up views. It doesn’t make SCOTUS wrong in this case though.
So can the wedding website designer be sued for not selling them a generic wedding website with no mention of them being gay, that they could fill in themselves?
From my understanding, that would be a different case entirely. So yeah, they could be sued.
This is the best take I’ve seen in this thread so far. It’s an issue of compelled speech, not of this or that demographic or ideology of the client or service. I’m not trying to dog whistle here, I hate that any business would exercise this in a hateful way, but another example of the reverse would be compelling a black-owned bakery to write an awful racist message on a cake. Obviously no person should be compelled to say what they don’t believe, regardless of the level of asshattery they dabble in.
A lot of shitty analogies abound.
How about these ones:
Is it ok to refuse service to a mixed race couple getting married?
Is it ok to refuse service to a couple, both of whom are black who are getting married?
I think these examples are much closer to the analogies people are coming up with in this thread. Or do you think being gay is an ideology? Is being gay a religion? Is being gay like being a racist?
Or is being gay something that a person is born as? If so isn't this a lot like being refused service because of race?
The question THIS LAW interacts with is the CONTENT of the message. If you’re providing tables for a wedding this law wouldn’t protect you. If you were asked to write something specific for the wedding and the content of the request is antithetical to your beliefs, this law would protect you, if you could show that. Not a lawyer, but that’s how I read it.
Now. Is it “right” to do so? I would say in absolutely no universe. It’s morally wrong, it undermines our liberal society, and I have no tolerance for it. My point is that this particular law isn’t about whether someone is a Christian, their race, or sexuality. This decision wouldn’t protect me from writing some basic software for a nazi (others might) but it DOES protect me from building a website supporting them, or writing prose related to nazism, or anything else which would be CLEARLY against what I believe. Please DON’T read that I’m saying that being a nazi is the same as being homosexual, it isn’t, I’m not, fuck nazis.
To get back to your question: as I read this decision, a cake maker could potentially be compelled to make a cake for an interracial couple, but they might not be compelled to make a cake with something like “interracial is the only way to go”
This all sounds like the staff using religion as an excuse to discriminate against gay people. Doesn't seem all that Christian to me, and in fact it seems like they're taking Our Lord's Name in vain by using it to justify their hateful actions.
But maybe they don't follow the teachings of Jesus Christ and don't follow the Commandments. Even if that's the case, the business is responsible for ensuring that customers aren't discriminated against by staff. If the business owners aren't up to meeting that standard, then they shouldn't be trying to run a business.
You’re right, and it doesn’t to me either, and I feel that it’s wrong, and I wouldn’t go and get a cake made with someone I know does this. I also think that you and I would agree on more than not. I’ll also add that I don’t have a dog in the religion debate here. But I still feel very strongly that in a free society it is their right not not be compelled to write something which directly contradicts their belief. I’ll need to think about this more in general, I might end up changing my mind on it, but at least for right now the right to not have to say something you don’t believe feels important to me. Let me ask you this, if an atheist baker were asked to write “Jesus is Lord” on a cake and said no, would you take issue with that? I wouldn’t; I’d argue that is a very clean first amendment right, and an important part of living in a liberal society. I also would go as far as to say that isn’t even intolerance from the atheist, it’s simply them believing something.
To your second point, while I agree that a business owner should not discriminate against a particular demographic, I’m not sure I’d go all out on any time someone says this they’re discriminating. Every religion and value system has prohibitions, and few of them are aligned. It’s possible to respectfully decline to do something as it directly contradicts your beliefs. Now if your beliefs are discriminatory, that’s a different and more complex question entirely. I’m not sure what to think about that case.
To me there needs to be a distinction between a business and a person. Sure maybe a person can't be compelled to do something against their beliefs, but a business can't claim to have beliefs and therefore can be compelled to do whatever the law requires.
And claiming religious beliefs isn't a card you can lay down anytime you want to get out of your responsibilities. I mean if I claim that paying taxes is against my religious beliefs do you think the government shouldn't be able to compel me to pay taxes simply because it's against my religious beliefs?
There's always an element of common sense judgement needed in the law which is why the people that do that are called Judges. So if in our best judgement these people simply don't like gay people and in our judgement they're just using religion as a way to trick people into thinking they're motives are based in religion and not based off on their prejudice, then what is the decision? To go along with their trickery that's using religion as an excuse? Or just tell them their arguments about religion is bullshitt and they have to get over their dislike of gay people and follow the law?
The problem here is members of Supreme court are willing to abdicate their responsibility to use judgement and go along with the obvious trickery because they share the baker's dislike for gay people.
I think that I agree with you in general on your first point. A business isn't a person, it doesn't have a religion, it can't have an opinion on people. But we're talking about a small business. If someone is running a web design company, they don't have a huge staff, they're just one person, so their individual convictions are at play, don't you think?
The example you give in your second point isn't quite congruent with this case, taxes are not speech. We're talking about speech. Now I have a personal conviction that the USA shouldn't be spending nearly so much on the military, but unfortunately for me, my taxes, and many people around the world, I don't have a say in the matter. If someone said something like "I don't want to pay this tax because it's being spent on something antithetical to my religious belief" even there, it's not speech.
I don't think it makes sense to compare being gay to being racist.
Alright I’m sorry, I don’t either. Which is actually why I pointed out specifically that I hate that anyone would use this in a hateful way. I’m surprised you think that I do think that it’s the same. Is there something in my comment which indicates that I believe that?
You reached for a completely non sequitur analogy.
It's not at all like that. If you're in the business of making cakes, and if you make cakes that have people's names on them for their weddings, and then you refuse a cake that looks like all the other cakes to a couple because you don't approve of which two consenting adults want their names on the goddamn cake because you just think exactly only one peen should be named in their relationship, that is just bigoted bullshit, and yes, this free country should stamp that shit out and not apologize for it, and we should all burn sparklers and celebrate that this free country offers us all the same freedom to buy a cake from the already-putting-peoples-names-on-wedding-cakes baker. There is no analog there for hateful messages on cakes whatsoever.
Edit: And if I missed your point entirely, I apologize. I'm not trying to be combative with anyone, but I am trying to stop what seems like people rationalizing this situation as having anything to do with free speech. I emphatically believe that it is a shitty excuse to apologize for a clearly biased agenda from the people who wormed their way into the US Supreme Court.
Yeah sorry, a couple of people sound like they think I meant that, I must not have articulated myself well.
If this decision protects that cake maker from doing so, then I would worry about it. Imagining EVERY cake were the same, obviously that would be wrong. I’m just trying to say that it seems like the law has more to do with the content of the message. If a couple wanted a cake saying “only gay sex” or something similarly funny, or a straight couple wanted a cake saying “all gays are bad”, I would feel that while we don’t need to be tolerant of the former business person, or the latter client, neither business person should be compelled to write the message on the cake. In the former case, they should be compelled to make a blank or similar cake with no message, simply not compelled to write the message.
Again, I’m not a legal expert so if I’m misreading the decision, that’s a different story.
This sets out my own thoughts on the situation as well. Thanks for posting.
Very well put
well put
Only state actors can violate the equal protection clause of the us constitution. The Muslim bakery example doesn't implicate the federal equal protection clause.
"If that Christian customer instead asks for a blank cake that they'll decorate themselves, the baker must sell it to them or else they are violating the equal protections clause."
This is an issue too though. The only person who can enforce the requirement that the Muslim Baker sell the cake is the government and the only way the government can force someone to work is through force. What you end up with is the government using threat of force to require someone to work. Which is slavery at its core. Anyone should have the right to refuse work if they don't want to.
That's not what equal protections meant though. It just meant you can't refuse to serve a customer based on their protected statuses like religion or sexual orientation.
If a church calls you to order a cake but you were planning to take time off work for a while, you could still say no. It was only a problem if you say "no, I don't bake cakes for Christians". That's not slavery. You can stop working, nobody was forcing you. Just that when you do work, you can't discriminate.
"If that Christian customer instead asks for a blank cake that they'll decorate themselves, the baker must sell it to them or else they are violating the equal protections clause."
This is an issue too though. The only person who can enforce the requirement that the Muslim Baker sell the cake is the government and the only way the government can force someone to work is through force. What you end up with is the government using threat of force to require someone to work. Which is slavery at its core. Anyone should have the right to refuse work if they don't want to.
Nope, because then you have people saying "I won't sell to blacks, if you force me sell them things I made it's slavery". And they aren't being forced to work, they are being forced to operate under the parameters our society agreed to (via lawmaking). The baker can quit, he's not forced to work there. The shop owner can close up shop, he's not forced to run that business. But if the owner wants to run that business they have to follow the laws of the land which say you will serve the public, and that means all of the public.
A Baker should be able to refuse to bake a cake he doesn't want to make. He shouldn't even have to give a reason. Anything less than that is by definition forced labor.