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Briefs from the Attic: The Masterpiece Cakeshop Case

In 1924, Louis Brandeis arranged for the law school to start receiving a copy of almost* every brief submitted to the Supreme Court. The library has been receiving these briefs for over 90 years now. Every year, at the end of its term, the Supreme Court sends about 15 large boxes to the library—each one filled to the brim with briefs. To celebrate the arrival of the 2017 term’s briefs, the library has created a display featuring the briefs from one of this term’s cases: Masterpiece Cakeshop, Ltd. v. Colorado Civil Rights Commission.

(* The library does not get every brief it is supposed to. Sometimes, individual briefs get lost in Supreme Court chambers. On average, the library receives over 90% of its allocated briefs.)

This case began when Charlie Craig and David Mullins tried to commission a wedding cake from Masterpiece Cakeshop in Lakewood, Colorado, only to be turned away by the owner, who stated that his religious beliefs prevented him from creating a cake that celebrated a gay wedding. The couple filed a complaint with the Colorado Civil Rights Commission, which held that the bakery violated the Colorado Anti-Discrimination Act, a decision that was upheld by the Colorado Court of Appeals.

Jack Phillips, the owner of the bakery, appealed the decision to the Supreme Court, which ended overruling the decision on narrow technical grounds. Justice Kennedy’s majority opinion held that the Colorado Civil Rights Commission displayed too much hostility towards Phillips’s religion to have judged the case fairly.

Once the Supreme Court agreed to hear arguments for the case, they began to be flooded with amici briefs—briefs submitted by parties not directly involved with the case but who have strong concerns regarding its outcome. Ultimately, 98 amici briefs were filed by (to name just a few) the National League of Cities, the NAACP, the Central Conference of American Rabbis, the American Bar Association, the Americans United for Separation of Church and State, the Restoring Religious Freedom Project, the Christian Legal Society, the American College of Pediatricians, various congress members and law professors, and the United States Solicitor General. Stacked together, the amici briefs total over 12 inches.

To commemorate the annual arrival of the Supreme Court briefs, the Law Library has put some representative briefs from the Masterpiece Cakeshop case on display in the library’s Reading Room:

• One brief supporting Jack Phillips was signed by 19 state attorneys general and argued that weddings cakes are artistic statements and that therefore the First Amendment protect bakeries from being forced to design cakes with messages they do not agree with. Interestingly, this brief was not signed by Kentucky’s Attorney General, although it is signed by the Kentucky Governor’s General Counsel.
• Attorneys General from 20 other states filed a brief that argued that reversing the Colorado decision would undercut state anti-discrimination laws. Kentucky’s Attorney General did not sign this brief either.
• 21 African-American conservative groups teamed up with Ryan T. Anderson, a conservative academic, to produce a brief that rejects the equivalency of this case and racial discrimination.
• 34 corporate law professors (including Brandeis School of Law’s Lisa Nicholson) produced a brief that argued that the Court should not grant religious exemptions for individual members of corporations.
• The American Psychological Association and the National Association of Social Workers produced a “Brandeis Brief” in support of Craig and Mullins. The brief cites numerous psychological studies to argue that anti-discrimination laws are needed to protect the mental well-being of people in the LGTBQ community.