Colorado Attorney General Cynthia Coffman is defending the state’s nondiscrimination law to the U.S. Supreme Court and not a Lakewood baker who refused to serve a gay couple, citing his religion.

Coffman filed the brief to the high court on behalf of the Colorado Civil Rights Commission, one of the parties in Masterpiece Cakeshop v. Colorado Civil Rights Commission.

“These denials of service are based on the claim that the bakery’s wedding cakes are ‘speech,’ and selling them to gay couples would infringe the First Amendment rights of the bakery’s owner, who objects to the marriages of same-sex couples on religious grounds,” Coffman’s brief states. “Everyone agrees that the government cannot force people or entities to ‘speak.’ School children cannot be punished for refusing to say the pledge of allegiance. A newspaper cannot be compelled to print a politician’s editorial. But those scenarios are nothing like the circumstances here, in which a state law has merely prohibited discriminatory denials of service by businesses open to the public.

“If a retail bakery will offer a white, three-tiered cake to one customer, it has no constitutional right to refuse to sell the same cake to the next customer because he happens to be African-American, Jewish, or gay.”

The full brief is available here.

The brief continued, “When members of the public walk into retail stores in Colorado, they bring with them a basic expectation: they will not be turned away because of their protected characteristics – including race, sex, religion, or sexual orientation.”

In September the Trump administration’s Justice Department filed a brief on behalf of Jack Phillips, the Masterpiece baker found to have violated the Colorado Anti-Discrimination Act by refusing to make a cake for the marriage of Charlie Craig and David Mullins in 2012, because same-sex couples violate his religious beliefs.

“Forcing Phillips to create expression for and participate in a ceremony that violates his sincerely held religious beliefs invades his First Amendment rights,” Acting Solicitor General Jeffrey B. Wall wrote in the brief.

One Colorado, the state’s largest LGBTQ advocacy group, said the Republican attorney general’s brief was a “forceful defense of the importance of non-discrimination laws.”

“Attorney General Coffman is doing the right thing by standing alongside Coloradans, enforcing Colorado’s nondiscrimination law, and filing this brief that sets the record straight about our values of equal treatment,” Daniel Ramos, One Colorado’s executive director, said in a statement. “It is the role of our elected officials to ensure that no one faces discrimination of any kind – and that includes not legally permitting any business to refuse service to a Coloradan because of who they are.

“Nondiscrimination is not a Democratic or Republican value – it’s about freedom and opportunity for all and the right of all families to work hard and care for themselves.”