The court’s ruling, written by former center-left Justice Anthony Kennedy, minced no words in explaining how the commission violated the First Amendment to force an agenda of illegal state hostility.

The Supreme Court could not have written a more scathing indictment against the Ku Klux Klan or a neo-Nazi skinhead group because those organizations do not wield state authority.

For a state agency to blatantly discriminate on a basis of religion violates the soul of a country with a Bill of Rights that begins with religious liberty.

The commission “disparaged Phillips’ faith as despicable and characterized it as merely rhetorical, and compared his invocation of his sincerely held religious beliefs to defenses of slavery and the Holocaust,” the Supreme Court ruled.

As explained by the court, the First Amendment’s Free Exercise clause requires “neutrality” by the state on all matters of religion. Imagine if the “Civil Rights” Commission characterized Islamic or Jewish beliefs as “despicable.” We would likely, and rightly, see protests in the street.

One month after the ruling, the commission taunted the Supreme Court by attacking Phillips with a new charge for declining a cake design to celebrate a sex change.

Given the hate agency’s notorious past performance, it is no surprise to read another scathing censure – this one from the Colorado Office of the State Auditor.

It turns out the “Civil Rights” Commission operates in darkness – as one might expect from a seedy hate group. In hiding its actions, the commission violates state law.

As the report explains, “The commission does not operate in a manner that allows for transparency or accountability. It could not provide evidence in meeting minutes or audio recordings that it discussed the cases, applied rules and policies to the reviews, and how it decided the disposition of any of the 218 cases it reviewed in Fiscal Years 2017 and 2018. Further, the commission votes in executive session, in violation of the Colorado Sunshine Law,” (emphasis ours).

Furthermore, the division does not maintain accessible records “to support its decision-making.”

By operating in secrecy, the commission could abuse other individuals – as it did Phillips – without public scrutiny. The Klan can operate in a closed-off basement; state government cannot.