Below is my opinion on recent incidents involving customers being forced out of businesses due to their political views or associations. There is a crushing irony for some who supported efforts to force businesses to prepare products from cakes to websites despite religious and political objections. In these cases, the owners were refusing to offer the same services (not expressive products) that they offer other customers.
Here is the column:
“This is my place of business.”
Those words from Jim Sheehan, owner of the Wydaho Roasters coffee shop in Driggs, Idaho, have sparked the latest controversy over the right of businesses to refuse service on the basis of religious or political views.
Sheehan has drawn national attention after throwing out a group of pro-life teenagers, calling them the equivalent of a Ku Klux Klan meeting in his shop. Sheehan clearly caters to those who want their lattes with an added shot of rage.
However, this and a number of other cases have exposed the hypocrisy of many regarding the service businesses must provide customers with opposing views. From cakes to coffee, shops remain ground zero for an age of rage.
Years ago, politicians and pundits rallied around the effort to force Jack Phillips, a cakeshop owner, to create cakes celebrating same-sex marriages. Phillips objected that it violated his religious beliefs. The case went all the way to the Supreme Court in what many of us hoped would be a final resolution of this conflict.
I had long criticized the framing of the case (and other similar cases) under the religious clauses rather than treating it as a simple matter of free speech. In the end, the Supreme Court punted in a frustrating 2018 decision.
In 2023, however, the Supreme Court delivered a major victory for free speech in 303 Creative v. Elenis. It ruled that Lorie Smith, a Christian website designer, could refuse to provide services for a same-sex marriage. Justice Neil Gorsuch wrote that “the framers designed the Free Speech Clause of the First Amendment to protect the ‘freedom to think as you will and to speak as you think.’ … They did so because they saw the freedom of speech ‘both as an end and as a means.’”
But notably, in cases like Masterpiece Cakeshop, Phillips insisted that he would always sell cakes to any couple, including same-sex couples. He only refused to make cakes specifically celebrating same-sex marriages, due to his religious views.
The case of Wydaho is different. Sheehan refused the same general accommodation offered to all customers because he opposes pro-life causes. In the confrontation, Sheehan declared that “in my world” pro-lifers are no different from the Ku Klux Klan.
“This is my place of business,” he declared. “I did a lot of work to get people on the ballot so women would have the right to choose in the state of Idaho, and this is something I do not support, nor does my wife, and it’s our business. So we have that choice.”
In my view, they do have that choice. Yet it must also be acknowledged what Sheehan is doing is far more extreme than what Phillips did in Masterpiece Cakeshop. He is not being asked to create a coffee concoction opposing abortion, like a Cafe Au Life specialty drink. He acknowledges that other groups might use the shop — he just does not want these teenagers to use it to support pro-life causes.
The same controversy arose the same week across the country in Virginia. In Alexandria, Fatana Karimi, owner of the Karimi Salon, threw out a woman after she revealed that she was Israeli. Jessica Walton posted an account of the encounter, and a video was later posted on social media.
In the video, the person identified as Karimi says that she declared on Instagram that she would not serve those who support Israel. (She also adds that she got Walton to sign a release for the video.)
The Virginia Human Rights Act states that businesses cannot engage in “unlawful discrimination in employment because of race, color, religion, ethnic or national origin, sex, pregnancy, childbirth or related medical conditions, age, marital status, sexual orientation, gender identity, disability, or military status.” Karimi will likely argue she refused service not due to Walton’s religion or national origin, but due to her support for Israel — a political position.
The case is reminiscent of the abusive treatment afforded to Harvard Law Professor Alan Dershowitz at Martha’s Vineyard by a pierogi stand. He was also refused service over his political views.
The line between national origin and religious discrimination versus political discrimination can be tenuous and unclear. However, in the video, the owner states that it is her national identity that is causing the action: “Get out of my shop. I can’t provide service to an Israeli. It’s against my political beliefs. You need to leave immediately.”
Back in Idaho, Sheehan’s bizarre analogy to the KKK outraged many, to the point that he later apologized for it. However, it is fascinating that liberals are now celebrating the right to exclude others for political or religious reasons, even when they are not asked to engage in any expressive act or make any creative product that contravenes their beliefs.
If that is now the case, many owe individuals such as Phillips an apology for years of costly lawsuits, even after the Supreme Court gave him his first nominal victory.
Sheehan could be prosecuted if he were refusing general service or accommodations to the teenagers due to their race or religion. But he is refusing service on the basis of his own political views. Wydaho Roasters does not appear to want business from people who are pro-life, of whom there might be quite a few in Idaho. Karimi appears not to want either Israeli or possibly Jewish customers. It is a curious business plan to exclude such a large segment of the market, but some owners are sure to put their political views before their profits.
However, those on the left cannot have it both ways. They cannot reject the free speech rights of some owners to decline service while celebrating others’ refusal to do the same thing. None of this is likely to make society any more civil. No one wants a black eye to go with the red-eye espresso.
Of course, recognizing the free speech rights of an unhinged coffee shop owner does not require patronizing his establishment. Sheehan clearly does not want to serve pro-life citizens, and I expect the feeling is mutual.
Jonathan Turley is a law professor and the best-selling author of “Rage and the Republic: The Unfinished Story of the American Revolution.” He is a member of the USA Today Board of Contributors.
Come On Man! HYPOCRISY – it is the orthodoxy of the illustrious DEMOCRAP! And now with the addition of the Socialist Wing they are ready to take flight to begin aerial bombardment of anything that is not Communism (oops, I mean Socialism because they are soooo radically different – NOT). Let’s see how many IDIOT AMERICAN VOTERS take the bait of of the faux promise – “you can have everything for FREE after we take it from the rich but you get what you pay for.”
What does a Virginia Employment Law have to do with a potential vendor-customer relationship?
Over the weekend after reading Turley’s articles and the comments it’s pretty hilarious how much cognitive dissonance permeates the right. Hypocrisy, double standards, and plain dishonesty with the facts is par for the course for Turley.
As usual he relies on the gullibility and lack of intellectual curiosity to rely on his readers to take his assertions as gospel. Ironically it’s exactly that kind of ‘dishonesty’ the fake polling column he criticized and its effectiveness on weak minded individuals that he relies on to disseminate his views.
Turley defends the right of conservative business owners to deny service based on who the customers are marrying, but feigns horror when a liberal business owner does the exact same thing based on what a political group advocates for. He bends over backward to legitimize discrimination when it is wrapped in religious conservative branding, but labels it “unhinged” when a secular business owner exercises the exact same autonomy. That’s hypocrisy in a nutshell.
He asserts that “liberals are now celebrating the right to exclude others for political or religious reasons.”
But, He provides exactly zero evidence of any mainstream liberal or civil rights organization celebrating the actions of the coffee shop owner or the salon owner. In reality, mainstream civil rights advocacy has consistently pushed for the expansion of public accommodation protections, not their erosion. Inventing a collective “liberal celebration” out of the isolated actions of a few small business owners is a classic strawman tactic.
He relies heavily on the distinction that a custom cake is an “expressive product” (protected speech), while a latte is a “general accommodation” (not protected).
This legal hair-splitting is a distinction without a difference in practice. In both scenarios, a business owner is looking at a customer, disapproving of their identity or beliefs, and refusing to serve them. Turley pretends that designing a basic website is a sacred act of artistic expression, but making a coffee is purely transactional, using this shaky premise to justify why one form of discrimination is noble and the other is a symptom of an “age of rage.”
The hypocrisy here is almost theatrical. Turley—who is actively promoting his book titled Rage and the Republic—uses hyper-charged, emotional language (“abusive treatment,” “unhinged,” “added shot of rage”) to stoke the very resentment he claims to despise. He isn’t analyzing law; he is generating traffic. By framing isolated, local disputes as a coordinated national cultural war, Turley is doing the exact thing he accuses the coffee shop owner of doing: serving his audience a daily dose of outrage.
Turley defends the right of conservative business owners to deny service based on who the customers are marrying, but feigns horror when a liberal business owner does the exact same thing based on what a political group advocates for.
Apples and dump trucks. Phillips said he would sell them any pre-made cake. He didn’t refuse their business, only his time to make a specialty cake. The Wydaho weirdo kicked them out of his shop.
Not close to the same thing…
Maybe we should revisit this in time and see how the Wydaho Roasters does business wise. There were similar episodes to this around Washington DC in the first Trump administration when some staffers were asked to leave restaurants and Trump and Republican groups were denied venues for meetings and it still happens.
I fail to see the sense of denying customers over their political views. I would think you would always want all the customers you can get. Competition in the business world is intense enough without handicapping yourself. You could find yourself de-banked. Another type of discrimination that has happened to Trump in the US and Nigel Farage in
England.
A risky decision to run your business that way because the public is very mercurial and can turn on your intolerance quite suddenly. I think that the owner here should be more thoughtful. He literally may screw his own business.
Liberal don’t have consistent morals, they change constantly to align with the situation. A black can’t be refused service because that is discrimination, but a Jew can be refused service because that is righteous.
You have to be immoral or insane to hold those two beliefs at the same time.
I agree when it comes to artistic production, whether a website or cake, as long as they don’t refuse to design just a website or cake but only refuse to make it and artistic creation their religious beliefs are against that is legal. Other than trouble making what I don’t understand is why you would want to go to such a person, you will never get their best work if they morally and religiously disagree with you, find a baker or website producer that aligns with what you desire. Of course the whole point is to make trouble and liberal propaganda.
Why don’t they push the gay issue with Muslims? Ask a Muslim to make a gay marriage cake or website? It’s very telling it is always Christians or Jews that are harassed legally.
“Liberal don’t have consistent morals, ” geeezzz… where to begin.
So liberals and Muslims are one and the same ideologically?
It’s a marriage of convenience between jihadists and communists. The divorce will be written in blood.
“However, those on the right cannot have it both ways. They cannot reject the free speech rights of some owners to decline service while celebrating others’ refusal to do the same thing. ” Fixed it.
Example Neville?
You fixed nothing because you don’t understand the issues, or anything else for that matter, your comments always just come from the same place, liberal delusion. It is not a refusal of just declining to do something as Mr. Turely pointed out like bake a cake or design a website. It is a refusal to go against their religious beliefs to make an artistic creation for a cake or website.
Or would you support a Pro lifer going to a Planned Parenthood web designer abortionist supporter to design a Pro Life website and enforcing that with the courts if the abortion supporter refused? You can’t have it both ways. In not you are a huge hypocrite, which we already know.
Funny how you assume to know where complements come from. Yours? From an ideology that hates change, religion, Muslims, foreigners, blacks, LGBQT, women etc., just about everyone. And you assume to know?
There is no less tolerant group in America than today’s leftists. They demand ideological conformity to a degree that would even embarrass their forebear Joseph Goebbels.
By your comemnt, one could say that you are intolerant of other’s ideology.
Celebrating the October 7 massacre, the assassination of Charlie Kirk, the assassination of Brian Thompson, and the multiple attempted assassinations or President Donald J. Trump … it’s an ideology that’s a bridge too far.
There is no common thread in the events you state. You’re assuming it political, then show the proof. A s s u m i n g. What about facts?
How in the world can you assume to know things that no one else knows?
A bridge too far. Run up to it and jump off.
In his Inaugural Address, Joe Biden passionately professed his dedication to “UNITY”. LOL
What does that have to do with Wydaho Roasters?
In his Inaugural Address, Joe Biden passionately professed his dedication to “UNITY”.
he was passionately expressing his dream of one day of having one brain that was capable of UNITY in thought
As Rodney King once said. . . .”Can’t we all get along?”
In the “rage” groups these days, it is those who can only see their reflection in a mirror that clouds their thinking.
“rage” groups? Yo make that up just now? What rage group do you id with?
You…sound angry.
You sound very angry….