The owner of a California bakery has asked the Supreme Court to review her challenge to a state law that requires her to make wedding cakes for same-sex couples, something she says violates her Christian beliefs.
In a petition filed Aug. 26, Cathy Miller asked the Supreme Court to hear her case — Catherine Miller v. Civil Rights Department. In the petition, Miller’s lawyers argue that California is violating the constitutional principle of protecting individual conscience from government interference. The petition comes after a California appeals court ruled against Miller and the state Supreme Court declined to hear her case.
“If she does not agree to design and create cakes for same-sex wedding ceremonies despite her undisputedly sincere religious objections, California says she must give up her cake-design business altogether,” according to the petition. “Miller must bake the cakes or give up her livelihood.”
Who is Cathy Miller?
In 2017, Miller, who owns Tastries bakery in Bakersfield, California, declined to decorate a cake for a gay couple, citing her Baptist faith and belief in traditional marriage.
“When I look at a cake, I have to think — what is the intent for the cake, how can I bless somebody with this?” Miller says in a video sharing her story. She says her Christian faith informs every aspect of her work, including her cake designs.
The petition emphasizes that California’s eight-year legal process infringes on both Miller’s free speech and religious liberty.
“The Bill of Rights does not leave ‘it open to public authorities to compel (Miller) to utter what is not in (her) mind,’” lawyers wrote. “And because designing and creating one of the most well-known and universal of all wedding symbols involves both Miller’s speech and her religion, both Clauses are implicated.”
The California Court of Appeal, however, rejected her claims, saying that the cake “conveyed no particularized message about the nature of marriage” and that the state’s public accommodations law applies.
Case background
Miller opened her bakery in 2013 with a mission to “honor God in all that we do.” Miller’s design standards, which she created in consultation with her pastor, are posted on her counter and detail what she can and can’t do. For instance, Tastries does not accept requests for baked goods that show “explicit sexual content,” promote drug use, depict “gore, witches, spirits, and satanic or demonic content,” or “that violate fundamental Christian princip(les),” according to the petition. One of the standards says that “wedding cakes must not contradict God’s sacrament of marriage between a man and a woman.”
Miller says her bakery was a way to answer her call from God to “serve others with joy and compassion,” she said in a prepared statement.
“I’m asking the Court to end California’s harassment once and for all. All I want is to serve my neighbors as the Gospel of Jesus Christ calls me to without being forced to create messages that violate my beliefs,” she said in a statement.
In 2017, a lesbian couple — Eileen and Mireya Rodriguez-Del Rio — approached Miller to create their wedding cake. Miller considered how to respond, because she didn’t want to hurt the couple, she said in the video. She told them she couldn’t make the cake due to her religious beliefs, but she recommended another cake decorator in town who could provide the service.
Later that year, California’s Civil Rights Department sued her for violating the Unruh Civil Rights Act, which bars discrimination in business.
In the months that followed, Miller says she received a barrage of hate messages, which included death and rape threats. “I couldn’t go anywhere except for the house, the bakery and my church for three months. It was devastating to our family,” she said.
After a trial court initially ruled in Miller’s favor in 2023, an appellate court reversed the decision, and the California Supreme Court declined to hear her appeal, prompting Miller to take her case to the U.S. Supreme Court.
The argument centered on whether the couple who sought a wedding cake from Tastries wanted a custom creation or a standard product.
“Under our independent review, we conclude defendants’ refusal to provide the Rodriguez-Del Rios the predesigned, multipurpose white cake requested was not protected expression under the federal Constitution’s free speech guarantee,” wrote associate justice Kathleen Meehan of the California 5th District Court of Appeal in February. “A three-tiered, plain white cake with no writing, engravings, adornments, symbols or images is not pure speech.”
Miller’s attorneys at Becket, however, insist that each cake is “custom-made according to Miller’s artistic vision” and argue she should not be forced to choose between her faith and her profession.
“We need the Supreme Court to figure this out and honor our constitutional rights,” Miller said in a video, made by Becket.
Similar religious liberty cases
Cathy Miller’s case mirrors the one of Jack Phillips, the Colorado baker who was at the center of the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2018 decision in Masterpiece Cakeshop v. Colorado Civil Rights Commission.
Phillips, a devout Christian, declined to design a custom cake for a same-sex wedding because he believed it would force him to express a message that conflicted with his faith.
The Colorado Civil Rights Commission ruled against him, but the Supreme Court ultimately sided with Phillips in a 7–2 ruling, emphasizing that the state had shown hostility toward his religious beliefs, though it left unresolved the broader question of whether businesses can refuse such services on free speech or free exercise grounds.
“When the Colorado Civil Rights Commission considered this case, it did not do so with the religious neutrality that the Constitution requires,” Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote in the majority opinion.
Another related case around refusing services on religious grounds was 303 Creative v. Elenis, in which a Colorado web designer, Lorie Smith, challenged a law that would have required her to create wedding websites for same-sex couples, contrary to her Christian beliefs.
In 2023, the Supreme Court ruled 6-3 in her favor, holding that forcing her to provide these services violated her First Amendment rights to free speech and free exercise of religion.
Like Phillips and Smith, Miller argues that being compelled to create custom wedding cakes for same-sex ceremonies violates her religious conscience.
“For eight long years, California has treated Cathy like an enemy — dragging her through court, smearing her name, and trying to force her to violate her faith,” said Adèle Keim, senior counsel at Becket, in a statement. Keim asked the Supreme Court to “put a stop to this bullying campaign and let Cathy design in peace.”
The U.S. Supreme Court will decide whether to hear Miller’s case. If it agrees, the case could move forward with briefing and possibly oral arguments in a future term.
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