Despite almost 30 years of Supreme Court case law emptying the First Amendment’s Free Exercise Clause of almost all substantive content (thanks largely to a 1990 decision by Justice Scalia called Employment Division v. Smith), the Supreme Court has now confirmed that the Free Exercise Clause does not let the government apply laws in a discriminatory way against religious believers, even if the laws were not designed to discriminate against those believers, simply because the government finds the religious belief “offensive.”
…In short, Masterpiece Cakeshop is the first post-Smith Free Exercise decision where the Supreme Court applied strict scrutiny to a neutral, generally applicable law that was not designed to target religion. Rather, strict scrutiny was triggered because of how the law was applied against religious objectors. Read more»
John C. Eastman, “Why The Masterpiece Ruling Is Truly A Major Win For Religious Liberty,” The Federalist (June 7, 2018).
Here’s a different view, also at The Federalist: http://thefederalist.com/2018/06/05/footnote-supreme-courts-masterpiece-ruling-bodes-ill-religious-liberty/
And yet another dire warning, also from The Federalist: http://thefederalist.com/2018/06/05/supreme-courts-masterpiece-majority-wants-kill-freedom-softly/
Exactly
http://www.adfmedia.org/News/PRDetail/10037
https://azcapitoltimes.com/news/2018/06/07/court-upholds-phoenix-anti-discrimination-ordinance/
Like i said, what the holding of masterpiece is will be further defined in future cases. This is a good thing.
http://thefederalist.com/2018/06/14/the-masterpiece-ruling-is-a-win-for-free-speech-if-nothing-else/