I specifically drive under the ticketable speed to avoid getting and paying fines.

Not a deterrent tho

Yes, they simply refused to make a cake and had the audacity to exercise their 1st amendment rights to criticize the government. Are you seriously suggesting that they should be fined for saying the government did something wrong? Good ****ing god m2b do you not realize how completely terrible that is?

Anais's Law

ikes is not going to sit quietly and let Obama's Gaystapo ruin this once great country.

You managed to come up w/ a really funny line. My world has been turned upside down.

This isn't a fine. It's compensation to the couple that was discriminated against for the harm they suffered as a result of the baker's actions.

and their family's action, and the public's action, and feels for 135k.... apparently.

I'm pretty sure that if the fine amount was because of the other **** the bakers did (the doxxing, slander, etc), the judge would have made mention of that. It appears to be solely because of the not baking of a cake, and the fine amount clearly appears to be a deterrent. It is hard to imagine that 135k is going to be a much larger deterrent than 100k or even 50k would have been, though. It does seem excessive.

It's in the synopsis. Or did you not get that far?

Don't google the egg shell skull rule, you'll never get your lawnmower back from orbit.

Fine is used loosely and it doesn't matter. Your justification for $200,000 is based on what the couple asked for. That is a ridiculous number in my view. Give me an example of how these things usually playout? Here's how I see it, in a civil lawsuit we have discovery where the plaintiff and the defendant basically build their cases. Along the way, before trial, judges encourage the parties to settle including settlement conferences. Pretty much my experience has been that the strength of the relative cases plays into the amount that a final settlement is arrived at. The vast majority of civil lawsuits are settled without a trial and the amounts are a lot less than what the plaintiff sues for. I sued somebody 3 or 4 years ago, he was clearly in the wrong but I settled out of court for about half of what I was asking for.

Oregon law seems to be that customer complaints are arbitrated more or less by the Labor Commissioner where the parties involved can appeal the decision by the labor commissioner in a state court. I could be wrong about that but that is my impression.

Personally I am fine with having a fine, judgement, whatever you want to call it for breaking the law. But there is no way, no how $200,000 is justified. Now as I understand it the couple that owned the bakery is pretty much judgement proof (the plaintiffs won't collect a dime) so maybe the ridiculous fine, judgement what have you his just his way to send a message.

Props to Love Sosa, I think this is the first time I've ever seen him deviate from his Politics formula of making one really stupid post and then leaving the thread forever. He made it to two this time!

LOL a Phill hypotheticals. The goal here is pretty simple actually. Fine the small business a reasonable amount that discourages breaking Oregon law. The amount should designed to keep the small business operational but at the same time send a message that breaking the law will be expensive. This fine would have put this bakery out of business if it wasn't already. I submit that having a profitable business that obeys the law is a good thing for the state of Oregon.

It was a tort case. The actual damages matter, not the "message" that is sent. Keeping the business operational is irrelevant.

Try again.

My comments about what the bakers did was not meant as a justification for the judgement, it was just me saying that these people are among the least sympathetic defendants I could imagine for this type of case. A pair of vindictive bigots who try to use their religion to justify their actions? Yeah, not going to shed too many tears or waste too much ink defending their cause.

They should be fined because they broke Oregon law and that caused actual harm to the plaintiffs. Unless you can point to some kind of clear error in the facts that proves the couple's emotional harm was not what they said it was, I'm ok with the the judgment. It appears to me that the family suffered an immense amount of mental and emotional harm that flowed directly from the baker's actions. Now it might be true that you or I would have taken it all in stride, said "**** you, bigot" and not thought twice about it, but not everyone is going to have the mental fortitude to deal with stigma, bigotry, and the stress and emotional trauma of receiving death threats and the real possibility of having your children taken away from you as you or I would.

You can really tell how much of this is just a simple lack of empathy here. Adios can imagine getting sued by some ******s and BIG GOVERNMENT ruining his business. That's awful! Imagine being put out of business by nosy bureaucrats not letting you run your business the way you want.

He can't imagine getting discriminated against in a meaningful manner. So **** those people. They are abominations unto the Lord anyway.

Just from reading about random lawsuits in the news basically every payout always seems high. What do you think an average amount is for emotional damage? I would guess around 50k a person. At 25k for both people you are barely compensating them for legal fees.

You're basically arguing that the parties couldn't settle out of court somehow because something something Oregon law. I'm not buying that. I'm sure the claim was set high initially in the expectation of some sort of settlement but that didn't happen. The owners decided to "stand strong". A judge (or whatever official) shouldn't be forced to negotiate for them when they stubbornly refuse to compromise at any level.

Most states a party can remove a case from the administrative hearing officer. Sort of shocking that the Defendants did not remove it to a trial court. Especially after the face book post which criticized the hearing officers department.

But the disagreement as to the amount goes more to whether the media circus and resulting third party actions are the proximate cause of defendants wrongful actions and something the hearing officer should have considered Defendants liable for or are more due to 3rd party intervening acts and Defendants rightfully exercising their first amendment rights. Not about egg shell defendants etc.

Time to resurrect this thread, knowing that nobody is likely to read this: Supreme Court will hear case of Colorado baker who refused to make wedding cake for same-sex couple

Despite the seemingly-unimportant nature of a wedding cake, I think this is a really interesting case, and I think I agree with the cake baker's legal argument. The issue at hand is whether or not a baker can be compelled by the state to design and create custom cakes whose messages conflict with his religious beliefs. (This is not a case of a baker declining to sell an off-the-shelf cake to a gay couple, which I think would clearly be legally wrong.)

The petition is here:
http://www.scotusblog.com/wp-content...t-petition.pdf

Basic question:
Key background facts (I assume they are not in dispute):

- Baker designs and creates specially commissioned cakes.
- Baker runs his company in accordance with his religious beliefs (e.g., closes the company on Sundays)
- Baker has previously declined to create cakes that conflict with his religious beliefs in other contexts (e.g., cakes celebrating Halloween, cakes with hateful messages)
- Baker declined to design and create a cake celebrating same-sex couple's same-sex wedding, but offered to make any other cake for them

First two paragraphs of the introduction that provide what I think is a winning argument:


Here, my thinking is just to suppose that a baker refused to design and create a cake celebrating the KKK (or the Westboro Baptist Church to keep it religious). In that hypothetical case, it seems clear to me that a baker shouldn't be compelled to express celebration of those entities. (I wouldn't want to be compelled to make that cake.) So it seems like a pretty clear First Amendment violation to compel different expression on someone because I happen to think his religious views are repugnant. And that's before considering the fact that the Colorado Civil Rights Commission does not compel artistic expression in the other cited cases.

So I'll be watching this case with interest, and it's a case where I think the morally wrong side has the winning legal argument.

I should also say that I don't believe pharmacists should have the right to decline to issue prescribed medication (e.g., birth control pills or Viagra) or that taxi drivers should have the right to deny passengers based on race or religion. I guess it comes down to differences in the applicability of First Amendment expression, but I'm not sure I can articulate a great argument for why I feel differently about the wedding cake case versus these other types of cases.

I think bringing religion into it should be enough for the state to say "we aren't going to start down this road of favoring religion over non-religious people." There are no rules as to what a religion is or what can be a "strongly" held view of one. Unfortunately though, I think this is how religion wins.

It's not clear to me why you make a distinction between selling off-the-shelf cakes to gay people and selling custom cakes.

In the first case, you're offering an existing product to the public, and choosing whether or not to sell based on the customer.

In the second case (assuming that you're not talking about an existing portfolio of custom cakes), the state is telling the baker that they have to express a particular message. I don't like that view. I don't think an artist should be compelled to create expression that they disagree with, the same way that I'm ok with ShopRite declining to make a birthday cake for 3-year old Adolf Hitler Campbell.

Well, if your artistic expression is a service you're selling to the public in a way that falls under public accommodations law, I don't think you can fairly discriminate against gay customers any more than you could refuse to sell an off the shelf cake to gay couples.

Hopefully it's the difference between what a reasonable person finds objectionable and what members of a religious group do...