Wedding Crashers: an Epistemological Model for When Refusal to Provide Service to Protected Groups Is Not Wrongful Discrimination

Abstract

The question of the relation between wrongful discrimination and the freedom of conscience and religion has been the subject of many debates over the past decade and has occupied both courts and the public. The most well-known legal case in that regard is likely Masterpiece Cakeshop, in which a Colorado bakery owner refused to bake a wedding cake for a homosexual couple and was sued for violating the State’s Anti-Discrimination law. Recently, the Supreme Court of the U.S has agreed to hear yet another Colorado case, 303 Creative llc v. Elenis, in which a website designer wanted to post a message saying she will not design websites for same-sex weddings. The purpose of our article is to point to a significant distinction between a refusal to serve clients on the basis of their race, gender, sexual orientation, etc., and a refusal to serve them because such service requires the providers to engage in activities or projects to which they deeply oppose. We think the latter case, sometimes, might not at all be discrimination. Importantly, we distinguish between a deep objection to the content of the service or product requested and a rejection of the client because of her characteristics. How can a supplier prove that his or her refusal to serve a client belonging to a “protected class” is based on the content of the product or service requested and not on the client’s characteristics? We formulate a two-prong test that courts in the US and UK have implicitly adopted. We ask, first, whether the supplier would refuse the same service to a client not belonging to the protected class, and second, whether the supplier would serve the same client (belonging to a protected class) with other products and services. If the answer to both questions is positive, then the supplier’s refusal is not wrongful discrimination because it shows an objection to the product or service requested and not a rejection of the client. In practice, this test is not always easy to apply. We therefore developed an epistemological model to substantiate the conditions that may help providers persuade the courts that their refusal to serve a client stems from the content of the request, not from the client’s identity.