Cakes Back In Court – Baker Who Refused To Make Wedding Cake For Lesbian Couple In 2017 Lobs Petition At SCOTUS

Featured Image: Photo by R. Wesley/Fox Photos/Getty Images

Since opening her bakery in 2013, Catharine Miller has received requests to make “gory” cakes, “marijuana” cakes, “adult” cakes, and even cookies featuring genitalia. Even an order for a husband who wanted to surprise his wife with a divorce announcement via baked goods. It seems like just yesterday that we learned that in 2017, the California baker refused to bake a wedding cake for a same-sex couple, resulting in an 8-year civil prosecution by the State of California, for violating laws that afford people full and equal service in all business establishments.

Trials ensued and Miller prevailed in both 2018 and 2022, when a California judge ruled that she had a right to free speech and expression of religion—and that these rights trumped any argument that she violated an anti-discrimination law. Then the California appeals court reversed the trial court’s decision, and THEN the California Supreme Court refused to hear her appeal in May 2025. Now she’s lawyered up again and setting her sights on the highest court in the land.

So are Catharine Miller’s religious liberty rights being disrespected, as claimed by her attorneys with the Thomas More Society? Is she being subjected to continued “harassment” by the state? Is the baker being “terrorized” over cake refusal, as The Christian Broadcasting Network (CBN) says?

“My love for Jesus Christ calls me to serve others with joy and compassion, and Tastries has been my way of answering that call for over a decade,” she said in a press 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.”

“Almost too cute to eat” cookies that do not violate Catharine Miller’s religious beliefs. Image via Instagram

Catharine Miller has standards, specifically, Tastries Design Standards, which she created under guidance from her pastor. Miller and her flour shop “do[es] not accept requests” for baked goods “portraying explicit sexual content,” “promoting marijuana or casual drug use,” “featuring alcohol products or drunkenness,” “depicting gore, witches, spirits, and satanic or demonic content,” or “that violate fundamental Christian princip[les].”   

The cake maker’s petition compares her conflict between conscience and government to that experienced by reluctant dissenters of antiquity, such as Sophocles’ Antigone and Daniel in the Biblical story in which he survives the lion’s den. Her lawyers reference Quakers excluded from office because they could not, in good conscience, participate in oath ceremonies that conflicted with their beliefs. Indeed, the petition argues, the Founders specifically designed the Constitution to prevent such tests of conscience in this country.

That is, to protect Catharine Miller from the demonic task of baking a white, multitiered cake for two people whose love has the power to drive a stake in the heart of her “undisputedly sincere religious objections.” 

Miller is being legally represented by Becket, LiMandri & Jonna LLP, and the Thomas More Society.

About that disco boot: we won’t tell her if you don’t (Image via Instagram)