Issues@Hand

AFA initiatives, Christian activism, news briefs

September 2019 – Aaron and Melissa Klein, who owned and operated Sweet Cakes by Melissa, were forced to close their family bakery in Gresham, Oregon, after being fined $135,000 in 2015 for refusing to design a cake celebrating a same sex marriage ceremony.

In addition, the Oregon Bureau of Labor and Industries had issued a gag order to preclude the Kleins from speaking about the case or their biblical beliefs. The Oregon Court of Appeals later reversed the gag order but upheld the remainder of the decision.

In June 2019, the U.S. Supreme Court heard arguments and sent the case back to the state to be reviewed again in light of the Masterpiece Cakeshop, Ltd. v. Colorado Civil Rights Commission decision, which clarified that government officials cannot be hostile to the free exercise of religious beliefs.

Jeremy Dys, deputy general counsel of First Liberty Institute, representing the Kleins, along with Boyden Gray & Associates, said, “The [SCOTUS] justices agreed with our petition that there was something wrong done to the Kleins here.”

onenewsnow.com, 6/18/19; firstliberty.org, 7/9/19