Justices side with Colorado baker on same-sex wedding cake
By MARK SHERMAN, Associated Press
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Supreme Court ruled Monday for a Colorado baker who wouldn’t make a wedding cake for a same-sex couple in a limited decision that leaves for another day the larger issue of whether a business can invoke religious objections to refuse service to gay and lesbian people.
The justices’ decision turned on what the court described as anti-religious bias on the Colorado Civil Rights Commission when it ruled against baker Jack Phillips. The justices voted 7-2 that the commission violated Phillips’ rights under the First Amendment.
The case had been eagerly anticipated as, variously, a potentially strong statement about the rights of LGBT people or the court’s first ruling carving out exceptions to an anti-discrimination law. In the end, the decision was modest enough to attract the votes of liberal and conservative justices on a subject that had the potential for sharp division.
Justice Anthony Kennedy said in his majority opinion that the larger issue “must await further elaboration” in the courts. Appeals in similar cases are pending, including one at the Supreme Court from a florist who didn’t want to provide flowers for a same-sex wedding.
The disputes, Kennedy wrote, “must be resolved with tolerance, without undue disrespect to sincere religious beliefs, and without subjecting gay persons to indignities when they seek goods and services in an open market.”
The same-sex couple at the heart of the case, Charlie Craig and Dave Mullins, complained to the Colorado commission in 2012 after they visited Phillips’ Masterpiece Cakeshop in suburban Denver and the baker quickly told them he would not create a cake for their wedding celebration. They were married in Massachusetts because same sex marriage was not yet legal in Colorado.
Colorado law prohibits discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation, and the commission concluded that Phillips’ refusal violated the law, despite Phillips’ argument that he is opposed to same-sex marriage on religious grounds. Colorado state courts upheld the determination.
But when the justices heard arguments in December, Kennedy was plainly bothered by comments by a commission member that the justice said disparaged religion. The commissioner seemed “neither tolerant nor respectful of Mr. Phillips’ religious beliefs,” Kennedy said in December.
That same sentiment coursed through his opinion on Monday. “The commission’s hostility was inconsistent with the First Amendment’s guarantee that our laws be applied in a manner that is neutral toward religion,” he wrote.
Liberal justices Stephen Breyer and Elena Kagan joined the conservative justices in the outcome. Kagan wrote separately to emphasize the limited ruling.
Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Sonia Sotomayor dissented. “There is much in the court’s opinion with which I agree,” Ginsburg wrote of Kennedy’s repeated references to protecting the rights of gay people. “I strongly disagree, however, with the court’s conclusion that Craig and Mullins should lose this case.”
The Trump administration intervened in the case on Phillips’ behalf, and Attorney General Jeff Sessions praised the decision. “The First Amendment prohibits governments from discriminating against citizens on the basis of religious beliefs. The Supreme Court rightly concluded that the Colorado Civil Rights Commission failed to show tolerance and respect for Mr. Phillips’ religious beliefs,” Sessions said.
Kristen Waggoner, the Alliance Defending Freedom senior counsel who argued Phillips’ case, said the court was right to condemn the commission’s open antagonism toward Phillips’ religious beliefs about marriage.
Waggoner said Phillips is willing to sell ready-made products to anyone who enters his store. But, “he simply declines to express messages or celebrate events that violate his deeply held beliefs,” she said.
Phillips was at his shop Monday morning, where he was busy answering the phone and getting congratulations from his supporters in person, including his pastor. One woman brought him balloons and others hugged him.
The American Civil Liberties Union, which represented the couple in its legal fight, said it was pleased the court did not endorse a broad religion-based exemption from anti-discrimination laws.
“We read this decision as a reaffirmation of the court’s longstanding commitment to civil rights protections and the reality that the states have the power to protect everyone in America from discrimination, including lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people,” said James Esseks, director of the ACLU LGBT & HIV Project.
Waggoner and Esseks disagreed about the ruling’s effect on Phillips’ wedding cake business. Waggoner said her client can resume his refusal to make cakes for same-sex marriages without fear of a new legal fight. But Esseks said that if another same-sex couple were to ask Phillips for a wedding cake, “I see no reason in this opinion that Masterpiece Cakeshop is free to turn them away.”
Several other legal disputes are pending over wedding services, similar to the Phillips case. In addition to florists, video producers and graphic artists are among business owners who say they oppose same-sex marriage on religious grounds and don’t want to participate in same-sex weddings.
Barronelle Stutzman, a florist in Richland, Washington, has appealed a state Supreme Court ruling that found she violated state law for refusing to provide the wedding flowers for two men who were about to be married.
The justices could decide what to do with that appeal by the end of June.
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Associated Press writers P. Solomon Banda and Nicholas Riccardi contributed to this report from Denver.

WEATHER:   MONDAY JUNE 4, 2018

TODAY: A mix of clouds and sun during the morning will give way to cloudy skies this afternoon. High near 70F.

TONIGHT: Partly cloudy skies this evening will give way to occasional showers overnight. Low 54F.

TUESDAY: Rain with thunderstorms by evening. High 69F

US unemployment falls nearly to 1969 levels; hiring is solid
By CHRISTOPHER RUGABER, AP Economics Writer
WASHINGTON (AP) — Another month of strong hiring drove the nation’s unemployment rate down to 3.8 percent — tantalizingly close to the level last seen in 1969, when Detroit still dominated the auto industry and the Vietnam War was raging.
Employers added 233,000 jobs in May, up from 159,000 in April, the Labor Department reported Friday. And unemployment fell to an 18-year low.
The report shows that the nearly 9-year-old economic expansion — the second-longest on record — remains on track and may even be gaining steam. Employers appear to be shrugging off recent concerns about global trade disputes.
“The May jobs report revealed impressive strength and breadth in U.S. job creation that blew away most economists’ expectations,” said Scott Anderson, chief economist at Bank of the West.
With the unemployment rate so low, businesses have complained for months that they are struggling to find enough qualified workers. But Friday’s jobs report suggests that they are taking chances with pockets of the unemployed and underemployed whom they had previously ignored.
Roughly an hour before the employment data was released, President Donald Trump appeared to hint on Twitter that a strong jobs report was coming. “Looking forward to seeing the employment numbers at 8:30 this morning,” he tweeted.
The president is normally briefed on the monthly jobs report the day before it is released, and he and other administration officials are not supposed to comment on it beforehand.
Larry Kudlow, the president’s top economic adviser, downplayed Trump’s tweet.
“He didn’t give any numbers,” Kudlow said. “No one revealed the numbers to the public.”
Investors welcomed the report. The Dow Jones industrial average rose 227 points, or 0.9 percent, in afternoon trading. Other indexes also moved higher.
The healthy jobs data makes it more likely that the Federal Reserve will keep raising interest rates this year — two and possibly three more times, after doing so in March.
Unemployment dropped from 3.9 percent in April. When rounded to one decimal, as the Labor Department typically does, the official jobless rate is now the lowest since April 2000.
But the unrounded figure is 3.75 percent, the lowest since December 1969. Unemployment remained below 4 percent for nearly four straight years in the late 1960s, but it rose to 6.1 percent during a mild recession in 1970. It didn’t fall below 4 percent again until the dot-com-fueled boom of the late 1990s.
Businesses desperate to hire are reaching deep into pools of the unemployed to find workers. Unemployment among high school graduates fell sharply to 3.9 percent, a 17-year low. For black Americans, it hit a record low of 5.9 percent.
And the number of part-time workers who would prefer full-time jobs is down 6 percent from a year ago. That means businesses are converting some part-timers to full-time work.
Companies are also hiring the long-term unemployed — those who have been out of work for six months or longer. Their ranks have fallen by nearly one-third in the past year.
That’s important because economists worry that people who are out of work for long periods can see their skills erode.
Those trends suggest that companies, for all their complaints, are still able to hire without significantly boosting wages. Average hourly pay rose 2.7 percent in May from a year earlier, below the 3.5 percent to 4 percent pace that occurred the last time unemployment was this low.
The number of involuntary part-time workers is still higher than it was before the 2008-09 recession.
Martha Gimbel, director of economic research at Indeed, the job-listing site, said some of the fastest-growing search terms on the site this year are “full-time” and “9-to-5 jobs,” evidence that many people want more work hours.
“That suggests there is still this pool of workers that employers can tap without raising wages,” Gimbel said.
Debbie Thomas, owner of Thomas Hill Organics, a restaurant in Paso Robles, California, said that finding qualified people to hire is her biggest challenge. She has raised pay by about a dollar an hour in the past year for cooks and dishwashers but is reluctant to go much higher.
“You don’t want to price yourself out of the market,” Thomas said.
The job gains in May were broad-based: Professional and business services, which include higher-paying fields such as accounting and engineering, added 31,000 jobs. Health care, a consistent job engine, gained nearly 32,000.
Manufacturing, which is benefiting from increased business investment in machinery and other equipment, added 18,000 jobs, and construction 25,000.
Some economists remain concerned that the Trump administration’s aggressive actions on trade could hamper growth. The administration on Thursday imposed tariffs on steel and aluminum imports from key allies in Europe, Canada and Mexico. Earlier in the week, it threatened to hit China with tariffs on $50 billion of its goods.
Still, consumer spending rose in April at its fastest pace in five months. And companies are also stepping up spending, buying more industrial machinery, computers and software — signs that they’re optimistic enough to expand. A measure of business investment rose in the first quarter by the most in 3½ years.
Macroeconomic Advisers, a forecasting firm, said it now foresees the economy expanding at a robust 4.1 percent annual pace in the April-June quarter, which would be the fastest in nearly four years. The economy expanded just 2.2 percent in the first quarter.