I think the Supreme Court has been for a long time and remains unlike the rest of our government.

A serious institution made up of grown-ups who have strong differences but try to address them through reasoned argument.

Hi and welcome to Amica Slates Podcast about the Supreme Court and the courts and the law. I am Daly Lethwick. I cover the courts for Slate and with this special thanks giving Weekend Edition Podcast, I just want to start by saying that we are thankful for you listeners and super thankful because this week our guest on the show is Adam Liptack who covers the Supreme Court for the New York Times. He writes their wonderful sidebar column. Adam was a finalist for the 2009 Puelled Surprise and explained it to us.

Adam is a good friend and steady influence at the court. Adam, first and foremost, welcome back to Amicus. It's great to be here, Daly. I always treat you to do this show.

Among other things, Adam has done great quantities of on the spot reporting about masterpiece cake shop. That's a case that the court is going to hear in a few short weeks. Adam, I wanted to have you on the show because I suspect that listeners know a lot about this case.

I don't know that we know all that you know. I wondered if you could start us off this week by setting the table just before we get into the nuts and bolts. Why is this case the event of the year at the Supreme Court?

You know, it's curious, Daly, because it's not the most consequential case. We have cases on gerrymandering that could reshape American democracy. We have cases on digital privacy that could completely transform forth amendment law.

But this case is so delicious because it's easy to understand and because everyone has strong feelings about it on one side or the other. And because the facts, as you were suggesting, actually reflect.

And this is not true of most Supreme court cases, exactly what the legal issues are. So if you understand the facts and they're fairly easy to understand, you'll have a sense of what the justices are going to decide.

Okay, so give us the facts then.

So five years ago, a gay couple in Denver visits a baker named Jack Phillips in Lakewood, Colorado and asks for a custom wedding cake. And here the facts matter a lot because the record reflects that this conversation was very short.

There was no discussion of what this cake would look like only that they wanted a wedding cake and they had some ideas and they bought a binder of ideas, but it never got off the ground because Jack Phillips says to them, I don't do cakes for same sex wedding ceremonies.

And they found this mortifying one of their mothers was with them the idea that they couldn't be served in a place open to the public was embarrassing on a front to their dignity.

And I don't doubt there's sincerity at all at the same time having visited with Jack Phillips. I think he's been perfectly sincere that it would violate his idea of religious freedom and his conscience to create what he considers an artwork to celebrate a same sex wedding.

So there are people of good faith on both sides and choosing between them one requires you to go to your set of moral intuitions, but two also requires us lawyers to look to competing bodies of law.

So layout what happens in the lower courts it's worth saying I think that while we can talk about Jack Phillips we've seen cases like this arise from calligraphers, florists, photographers Jack Phillips has kind of come to stand in for all of the folks that the religious dissenters, but take us back because these folks don't do well generally in the court. So take us through the history of this one.

So in this one the couple goes to the Colorado Civil Rights Commission which finds that the Baker had violated a Colorado anti discrimination law. Colorado and this is not true of all states, not true of most states has a law that forbids discrimination not only on the familiar grounds of race and gender and religion, but also on sexual orientation.

And the Civil Rights Commission and then the Colorado courts found that this was a plain violation of this anti discrimination law and they rejected Phillips's argument grounded primarily in the first amendments free expression clauses that he had a first amendment right not to use his artistic abilities to convey a message he disagreed with.

And you hinted at this, but I think it's worth really unpacking you you sat down with Jack Phillips you sat down with Charlie Craig and David Mullins that's the couple you really I think have made the point both on this show and in your print reporting that these folks are all in good faith right I mean it this is not a case in which you can say somebody is posturing for you know larger reasons than than their own I mean these are all.

People who really deeply and sincerely believe in what they claim to believe right right and that makes it different from some Supreme Court cases where you have the idea that lawyers have a case in mind and then they go recruit a plaintiff they find someone for an affirmative action case or a second amendment case but the case is sort of pre cooked and then you have to find a plaintiff this case arises organically the incident happens and as you say dollia both sides

thoughts they were doing the right thing.

Okay now we have to talk about the first amendment piece because that is and again you've reported this out that is splitting first amendment die hard in strange and complicated ways so can you help us understand how it is I mean there's so many amicus briefs filed in this case it's extraordinary some very strange bed follows.

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