and noble purpose, and on the other hand the free speech rights of those people who own businesses that involve creative creations like cakes or what have you. let me pull up that graphic again just to lay out the nuts d bolts of this case here because, remember, this all went wn in colorado. a cake shop owner, lake wood baker jack philips was asked to make a cake for this couple charlie craig and david mullins. he declined. he basically said doing so would go against his christianity, his religious beliefs that marriage is just between a man and a wab. so this case escalated all the way to the supreme court and we now have that decision today that danny, as you noted, is narrow. that s something that s been noted by nbc justice correspondent pete williams who s joining us live again now outside the court. we were just having a conversation with our legal analyst who said this was not a particular surprise given how oral arguments seem to have gone. reporter: it was a 7-2 ruling. o
mayo dissented from the court s holding here. they ve dodged the larger question. what he s talking about is that the oral argument there was a question from justice kennedy who wrote the opinion here about a comment made by a member of the colorado human rights mmison. co iofhose states thats have has that has hey human rights law and on that basis they said the baker has to bake the cake for the same-sex couple. what justice kennedy says is that comment by that member of the colorado human rights commission is evidence of hostility to his religious views. so for that reason, and that reason only, the baker gets a win here. but it doesn t say anything about the larger issue. and let me just read briefly from the conclusion of the opinion. great. reporter: he says. the outcome of cases like this in other circumstances has to wait for further elaboration in ourts and then here s the key part, all in the context of recognizing that these disputes
a majority for the rights of same-sex couples at the supreme court. but on the other hand, clearly believes in the sincere religious views of people who are uncomfortable with same-sex marriage. so he was looking for a middle ground and the middle ground that he found was to say that in this one case the colorado government was hostile to the religious views of the baker, but that he can clearly see plenty of case where s there wouldn t be hostility. it would just be a neutral attempt to protect same-sex couples. and so it gives a lot of guidance, i think, while giving both sides something that they want, religious groups get a lot of protection from the supreme court saying that you can t be hostile to religion. gay rights groups get the same pro section you d get from other protected groups, including say for example african americans. we know two justices dissented in what was a 7-2 decision. we have seen other cases that have had a much closer decision point, 5-4 for example.
has two components. freedom of religion and freedom of expression. this was primarily a freedom of expression case. what the baker said is, my cakes are works of art. they express a view. and by forcing know bakeme to be for something i disagree with you re vile violating my freedom of expression. so there, arguments about is a cake expression. all the weddings i ve been to a cake never says anything and the couple never got into discussing how this cake would look. as soon as they said what they wanted it for the baker said, sorry, i can t do that. so that s a question here. are flowers expressive? is a wedding invitation expressive? that s a big question to be resolved in addition to the case here. so it s the narrowest possible victory and it doesn t say anything about how cases like this which are sure to come back are going to be resolved. this is the newest front in what
what do you make of the way that the justices side on this one? i think probably what happened is you had the center of the court, you menoned we ve been talking about justice kennedy, but justices briar, cag began, the chief justice and kennedy said we came together and find a centrist decision and that made it unnecesry for the case to be 5-4. they didn t have to break it down on strict ideological grounds as if to say you can always prohibit bakers from revie reviews refusing to provide these services. they said compromise. and follow-up to you, danny, again, we are waiting for reaction from the baker s attorneys, from this same-sex couple s attorneys as well. do you believe that religious liberties advocates will try to run a victory lap here? it is a victory. appearance a narrow victory for religious liberty, but it still doesn t answer the question