Ruling eyed after city bans farm from market over refusal to host gay weddings

Following a bench trial last week week a federal court in Michigan is set to rule in the case of a farm that was banned from a city-run market in East Lansing over its owners’ refusal to allow same-sex couples to hold weddings on their property.

According to a July 30 report by Fox News, the years-long legal battle that started in 2016 is yet another example of the difficulty federal courts are having balancing the First Amendment rights of religious people and the rights of gay people not to be discriminated against. And it implicates two major Supreme Court rulings from the past four years.

Country Mill Farms, just outside Charlotte, Michigan, is run by Stephen Tennes and his wife Bridget, and they sold their produce at a market run by the city of East Lansing, Michigan for years. The family also hosted weddings on their property but in 2016 temporarily stopped doing so amid controversy over a Facebook post in which the family said it objects to same-sex weddings because of their Catholic faith.

The family eventually announced in December, 2016 Facebook post that it would resume holding weddings but exclude gay couples. This prompted East Lansing to ban Country Mill from its market under a newly-created policy saying all vendors must adhere to the city’s non-discrimination policy in their general operations.

Fox News also reported:

“If a city can target and punish a farmer for his religious beliefs on marriage, and do the things that they did and get away with that kind of authority over somebody’s religious beliefs… they really have the power to try to impact everybody’s religious beliefs,” Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF) Senior Counsel Kate Anderson told Fox News. ADF is representing Country Mill in this case. 

“That’s something that violates our Constitution and should never happen,” Anderson added, calling the city’s conduct “egregious.”

“The Country Mill engages in expressing its purpose and beliefs through the operation of its business and it intentionally communicates messages that promote its owners’ beliefs and declines to communicate messages that violate those beliefs,” the farm said in the December 2016 Facebook Post. “For this reason, Country Mill reserves the right to deny a request for services that would require it to communicate, engage in, or host expression that violates the owners’ sincerely held religious beliefs and conscience.”

The ruling by Judge Paul Maloney – a George W. Bush appointee – will be important to the parties involved. 

But there’s a strong chance that Maloney’s ruling won’t be the last word in the case, which may work its way to the appeals courts or higher and affect the law in much or all of the country. ADF has taken several high profile cases to the Supreme Court, including multiple major rulings issued in the last couple of years on school choice, freedom of association and more. 

To view the entire Fox News story, visit here.

Photo above: Stephen Tennes speaks at a press conference as his wife, Bridget, looks on.

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