A Bakery's "Faith-based Convictions" Are "Intentionally Discriminatory"

In the US, an appeals court ruled last week in a suit brought by California's Civil Rights Department that the owner of a bakery who refused to sell a generic wedding cake to a lesbian couple in 2017 violated the law.

The case stemmed from the marriage of Eileen and Mireya Rodriguez-Del Rio, who visited Tastries bakery in Bakersfield to buy a cake for their wedding in August 2017. 

The couple spoke with an employee and selected a pre-designed plain, white, three-tiered cake that the bakery often sells for various celebrations including birthdays and baby showers, according to court filings. 

When the couple returned with friends and family for a tasting the following week, Tastries’ owner Catharine Miller refused to sell the cake upon learning it would be served at a same-sex wedding. 

Miller is a devout Christian who also refuses to make cakes depicting marijuana use or sexual imagery. She later told the courts she has a bakery policy stating that “wedding cakes must not contradict God’s sacrament of marriage between a man and a woman”. 

The couple filed a complaint with the state Civil Rights Department, which sued Miller in 2018. Miller, who is represented by the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty, argued her policy was based on her religious beliefs about marriage, not hostility toward LGBTQ people.

A Kern County judge sided with her, ruling that Miller’s policy did not violate the state’s Unruh Civil Rights Act because it applies to all customers, and because Miller referred the couple to another bakery that had previously agreed to sell cakes to same-sex couples (but which the Rodriguez-Del Rios had already ruled out). 

The state appealed the decision last year, and a three-judge panel of the 5th Appellate District reversed it in a unanimous ruling. The judges ruled Miller’s policy is not neutral because it could only apply to customers on the basis of their sexual orientation. They also ruled that reproducing a plain cake with no writing or decorations that Miller would have sold to anyone else does not count as being forced to express support for a same-sex wedding. 

“Drawing the contours of protected speech to include routinely produced, ordinary commercial products as the artistic self-expression of the designer is unworkably overbroad”, the judges wrote. 

Miller, through a spokesperson at the Becket Fund, declined to comment. In a statement, her attorney and Becket Fund vice president Eric Rassbach said Miller would continue to run the bakery while they appeal the decision to the state Supreme Court.

Berjaya Food Bhd reported Friday their fifth straight quarterly loss, blaming pro-Palestine boycott against American brands as the reasons behind their financial struggles. 

The group, which operate the Starbucks and Kenny Rogers franchise in Malaysia, reported a pre-tax loss of RM67.09 million in the six-month period ending December 31, 2024. Their pre-tax revenue in that period was RM247.3 million – a whopping 46 percent steep fall from RM461.09 million in the same period the previous year.