In Civil Rights Department v. Cathy's Creations, Inc., (CA App., Feb. 11, 2025), a California state appellate court in a 74-page opinion held that a bakery violated the anti-discrimination provisions of the Unruh Civil Rights Act (UCRA) when it refused to sell a predesigned white cake to a customer because the cake would be used at the customer's same-sex wedding reception. The bakery had a policy of refusing customer requests that violate fundamental Christian principles. The court rejected defendant's free exercise and free speech defenses and concluded that the bakery's referral of the customer to another bakery did not eliminate the violation. The court said in part:
Here, the policy’s application hinges not on the act of marriage, but on the same sex status of the couple to be married. Thus, the policy’s purposeful exclusion of same sex couples is facial discrimination because of sexual orientation....
... [T]he fact that Miller’s adoption of the discriminatory policy was driven by her sincerely held religious beliefs rather than malice or ill will is irrelevant to the issue of intentional discrimination....
Discriminatorily denying service and then telling would-be customers they may take their business down the street (or farther) to a separate, unassociated establishment where they may be served by way of referral in no way ensures full and equal access to the product or service at the same price and under the same conditions.... [A] referral to a separate and independent business subjects the customer to “‘the deprivation of personal dignity that surely accompanies denials of equal access to public establishments’” that public accommodation laws like the UCRA are generally designed to address.....
Focusing on the bakery's free speech and free exercise defenses, the court said in part:
The act of providing a product to a wedding reception with the intent to send a message does not transform that product into pure speech if the product itself is not the self-expression of the vendor. If this were the case, a host of nonexpressive products or services provided for a same-sex wedding reception could be deemed to convey a message merely because they were provided for the event—e.g., flatware, chairs and linens, etc. Moreover, many standard products provided to a wedding reception are equally as visible as the cake and used by the couple in a symbolic manner.... The mere fact these products are prepared for and provided to a same-sex wedding in a routine economic transaction does not transform them into the self-expression of the vendor....
There is also little likelihood a viewer would understand the cake’s sale and provision to a same-sex wedding conveyed any message about marriage generally or an endorsement and celebration of same-sex marriage in particular....
Here, the UCRA does not draw any distinctions between secular and religious activities, and there is no evidence the UCRA was enacted as a means to discriminate against religion. Moreover, defendants’ argument the statutory provisions relating to the preservation of housing for senior citizens ... are contradictory secular exemptions under the UCRA, rendering it not generally applicable, is unpersuasive.
