The brief orders, issued without registered dissents, suggest the justices are essentially deadlocked on both issues for now.
WASHINGTON (Tribune News Service) — After failing to fully resolve two difficult cases this term, the Supreme Court signaled Monday that it was still not ready to decide when a Christian shop owner can refuse service to a same-sex wedding and whether some states have gone too far in gerrymandering their election maps for partisan advantage.
The justices said they would not yet accept two similar cases next year, sending them back to lower courts to be reconsidered under the hazy standards recently issued by the high court.
The brief orders, issued without registered dissents, suggest the justices are essentially deadlocked on both issues for now.
Justice Anthony M. Kennedy usually acts as the tie breaker in the close cases, but he apparently declined this month to decide on the constitutionality of partisan gerrymandering or whether store owners have a right to an exemption from a state civil rights law that requires equal treatment for all customers, including gays and lesbians.
The court sent back a pending appeal from a florist in Richland, Wash., who was convicted of violating the state’s civil rights law for refusing to provide a floral arrangement for a wedding of two men.
The court’s one-line order on Monday said Washington state judges should reconsider the case “in light of Masterpiece Cakeshop vs. Colorado.”
In that case, the justices by a 7-2 vote, ruled narrowly for a Colorado baker, but without deciding whether he had a right to refuse service to two men who were preparing to celebrate their marriage. Instead, the court ruled only that members of the state civil rights commission made comments that reflected a “hostility to religion.”
Lawyers for Alliance Defending Freedom had filed a similar appeal in the case from the state of Washington.
They described Barronelle Stutzman, the owner of Arlene’s Flowers, as a 72-year-old grandmother and a “floral design artist.” She said she had known Robert Ingersoll as a longtime customer and a friend, but said she told him she could not help with his impending wedding “because of my relationship with Jesus Christ.”
Lawyers for the state quietly urged her to comply with the state’s civil rights law, but sued her when she refused. A judge ruled the florist had violated the state law and fined her $1,000.
In her appeal, she urged the Supreme Court to rule that she had a free speech right to refuse to provide “artistic expression” to celebrate a same-sex wedding. She also said that requiring her to provide flowers violated her right to the “free exercise of religion.”
Both claims were before the justices in the case of the Colorado baker.
The justices had held the appeal in Arlene’s Flowers vs. Washington while they decided the Colorado case.
Meanwhile, North Carolina Republicans had appealed a federal ruling that struck down the state’s congressional districts. The map gave the GOP a lopsided 10-3 margin in its delegation to the House of Representatives.
But rather than decide the appeal, the justices said the lower court should reconsider the case of Rucho vs. Common Cause “in light of Gill vs. Whitford,” the Wisconsin case. Last week, the justices said only that the plaintiffs did not have standing to seek a state-wide order because they lived in just a few districts.
In both cases — from Washington and North Carolina — the judges are likely to reissue their rulings, thereby sending the appeal back to the Supreme Court.
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