The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday declined to hear a challenge to a lower court ruling that found that the owner of a Hawaii bed and breakfast violated a state anti-discrimination law by turning away a lesbian couple, citing Christian beliefs.
The justices refused to hear an appeal by Phyllis Young, who runs the three-room Aloha Bed & Breakfast in Honolulu, of the ruling that she ran afoul of Hawaii’s public accommodation law by refusing to rent a room to Diane Cervilli and Taeko Bufford in 2007. Litigation will now continue that will determine what penalty Young might face.
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The case was appealed to the nine justices in the wake of the high court’s narrow 2018 decision siding with a baker from Colorado who refused based on his Christian faith to make a wedding cake for a gay couple.
That decision did not resolve the question of whether business owners can claim religious exemptions from anti-discrimination laws. Young said her decision to turn away the same-sex couple was protected by her right to free exercise of her religious beliefs under the U.S. Constitution’s First Amendment.
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The Supreme Court in the baker case also did not address important claims including whether baking a cake is a kind of expressive act protected by the First Amendment’s free speech guarantee, a question not raised in the Hawaii case.
The conservative-majority court could yet weigh in soon on both issues as it has a separate appeal pending involving a different bakery in Oregon that refused to make a wedding cake for a lesbian couple.
