Mr. Phillips says that he should not be forced to use his talents to convey a message of support for same-sex marriage. The couple, Charlie Craig and David Mullins, say that businesses open to the public should not be allowed to discriminate against gay men and lesbians.
Tuesday’s argument, which lasted almost 90 minutes instead of the usual hour, appeared to divide the justices along the usual lines.
The more liberal justices probed whether all sorts of artisans — tailors, hair stylists, makeup artists, chefs — could refuse to supply goods and services for same-sex weddings. Conservative justices considered whether artists can be required to convey messages with which they profoundly disagree.
Kristen K. Waggoner, a lawyer for Mr. Phillips, said her client was an artist, one who created a sort of sculpture.
Justice Sonia Sotomayor appeared unpersuaded. “When have we ever given protection to a food?” she asked.
Justice Stephen G. Breyer said the questions served a purpose.
“Where is the line?” he asked. “That is what everyone is trying to get at.”
Both Ms. Waggoner and Mr. Francisco said that it would be harder to justify discrimination against interracial couples than gay ones. “Race is particularly unique,” Mr. Francisco said.
That distinction did not seem to sit well with some justices. And David D. Cole, a lawyer for the couple, said it would relegate gay and lesbian couples to second-class citizenship.
But Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. said the court’s 2015 decision establishing a constitutional right to same-sex marriage had anticipated good-faith disagreements over gay unions.
“The court went out of its way to talk about the decent and honorable people who have opposing views,” Chief Justice Roberts said, referring to Justice Kennedy’s majority opinion. (The chief justice had dissented.)
The remark was a sign of Justice Kennedy’s central role in the case, Masterpiece Cakeshop v. Colorado Civil Rights Commission, No. 16-111. He is at once the court’s most prominent defender of gay rights and its most committed supporter of free speech.
In his majority opinion in the 2015 decision, Obergefell v. Hodges, he indeed seemed to anticipate clashes like the one from Colorado. Justice Kennedy called for “an open and searching debate” between those who opposed same-sex marriage on religious grounds and those who considered such unions “proper or indeed essential.”
At Tuesday’s argument, he indicated sympathy for the rights of gay men and lesbians. But he also indicated that he believed the civil rights commission had mistreated Mr. Phillips. He quoted from the remarks of one commissioner who called Mr. Phillips’s position despicable, and he seemed troubled by a part of the commission’s ruling that required Mr. Phillips to retrain his staff.
Frederick R. Yarger, a lawyer for the commission, said he disavowed the commissioner’s comment, but Justice Kennedy did not appear satisfied.
“Tolerance is essential in a free society,” Justice Kennedy said. “It seems to me that the state in its position here has neither been tolerant nor respectful of Mr. Phillips’s religious beliefs.”
The practical implications of Justice Kennedy’s concerns were unclear. They left open the possibility, for instance, that the Supreme Court could return the case to the commission for a rehearing before an unbiased panel.
Gay rights groups say that allowing businesses to refuse to provide services for same-sex weddings would undermine the decision’s promise of equality. The owners of some businesses that run on religious principles say they should not be made to choose between the demands of their consciences and their ability to make a living.
Around the nation, businesses like bakeries, flower shops and photography studios have argued, so far with very little success, that forcing them to serve gay couples seeking to celebrate their unions violates the constitutional right to free speech.
The Colorado case arose from a brief encounter in 2012, when Mr. Mullins and Mr. Craig visited Mr. Phillips’s bakery, Masterpiece Cakeshop, in Lakewood, Colo. The couple were looking for a wedding cake, and Mr. Phillips turned them down.
“I’ll make you birthday cakes, shower cakes, cookies, brownies,” Mr. Phillips recalled saying. “I just can’t make a cake for a same-sex wedding.”
Mr. Mullins remembered being stunned. “We were mortified and just felt degraded,” he said. The couple filed discrimination charges, and they won before a civil rights commission and in the courts.
Mr. Phillips, who calls himself a cake artist, argued that two parts of the First Amendment — its protections for free speech and the free exercise of religion — overrode a Colorado anti-discrimination law and allowed him to refuse to create a custom wedding cake. But he has focused most of his argument on his free speech claim, relying on Supreme Court decisions forbidding the government from compelling people to say things they do not believe.
In 2015, a Colorado appeals court ruled against Mr. Phillips, saying that his free speech rights had not been violated and noting that the couple had not discussed the cake’s design before Mr. Phillips turned them down. The court added that people seeing a cake created by Mr. Phillips would not understand him to be making a statement and that he remained free to say what he liked about same-sex marriage in other settings.
“Masterpiece does not convey a message supporting same-sex marriages merely by abiding by the law and serving its customers equally,” the court said.
The Alliance Defending Freedom, a conservative Christian group that represents Mr. Phillips, said in a brief that the Supreme Court has long recognized a First Amendment right not to be forced to speak. In 1977, for instance, the court ruled that New Hampshire could not require people to display license plates bearing the state’s motto, “Live Free or Die.”
The American Civil Liberties Union, which represents the couple, has argued that a ruling for Mr. Phillips would create a broad mandate for discrimination. If a baker has a free speech right to discriminate, the A.C.L.U. said, then so do all business owners who may be said to engage in expression, including florists, photographers, tailors, choreographers, hair stylists, restaurateurs, jewelers, architects and lawyers.
Justice Neil M. Gorsuch, who seemed ready to side with Mr. Phillips, said wedding cakes can have shortcomings. “I’m yet to have a wedding cake that I’d say tasted great,” he said.
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