European court declines to take Northern Ireland 'gay cake' discrimination case - The Washington Post

Europe’s top human rights court Thursday ruled inadmissible a man’s discrimination claim against a Belfast bakery for declining his pro-gay marriage cake order because of its owners’ religious beliefs.

The ruling ended a years-long legal battle that had raised questions about civil rights, religious freedoms and sexual orientation in Northern Ireland, a region of Britain.

The saga also mirrored similar, high-profile cases in the United States where bakeries and other businesses in recent years have refused to cater same-sex weddings.

The European Court of Human Rights, or ECHR, said Thursday that the claim was inadmissible because the complainant, gay rights activist Gareth Lee, had failed to invoke his rights under Europe’s human rights convention as the case made its way through the British court system.

“By relying solely on domestic law, the applicant had deprived the domestic courts the opportunity to address any Convention issues raised,” the judges wrote, adding that Lee was asking the ECHR to “usurp the role of domestic courts.”

The complaint was first made in 2014 after Lee notified Northern Ireland’s Equality Commission that the Christian-run bakery, Ashers Baking Co., had canceled his order for a cake featuring Sesame Street characters Bert and Ernie and bearing the slogan “Support Gay Marriage." Same-sex marriage was illegal in Northern Ireland at the time.

The company fired back, citing religious freedom, but ultimately lost the original case and a subsequent appeal. In 2018, however, Britain’s Supreme Court ruled in favor of Ashers, saying that the bakery had not discriminated against Lee because of his sexual orientation.

“They would have refused to make such a cake for any customer, irrespective of their sexual orientation,” the court’s then-president, Lady Hale, said, the BBC reported. “Their objection was to the message on the cake, not to the personal characteristics of Mr. Lee.”

Lee said Thursday that he was disappointed that the case was dismissed on a “technicality.”

“None of us should be expected to have to figure out the beliefs of a company’s owners before going into their shop or paying for their services,” he said.

The Irish Times quoted the deputy director of the Committee on the Administration of Justice, a Northern Ireland-based rights group that was a third-party intervener in the case, as saying the ruling was a “missed opportunity” for the ECHR.

The court, Daniel Holder said, could have used the decision to “clarify its case law on sexual orientation and discrimination in the private sector, particularly when it is said to relate to the message rather than the customer."

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