In an ironic twist of fate, another religious freedom/public accommodation conflict has arisen in the same week that the Supreme Court heard an important case about the issue.

Only the tables were turned. An LGBT-friendly restaurant turned away a conservative religious group based upon their beliefs.

Ed wrote about the case, 303 Creative vs. Elenis, as did I. Ed covered the nuts and bolts of the case and I wrote about the ACLU’s anti-religious freedom position. Both the State of Colorado and the ACLU argued that religious freedom doesn’t extend to denying creative expression in support of an event to which the proprietors of a business object.

It would be interesting to know if either set of lawyers would side with the party denied service in this case.

A Virginia-based conservative Christian advocacy group was turned away from a local restaurant just an hour before their reservation last week.

A representative of the Family Foundation said he was frustrated after the group was turned away from Metzger Bar and Butchery last Wednesday. The group claims the refusal had to do with their religious beliefs.

According to Todd Gathje, Director of Government Relations for the Family Foundation, one of the owners of Metzger called a representative of the Family Foundation about an hour before the reservation time, saying that the group would not be dining in the restaurant.

“We’ve had events at restaurants all over the city and never encountered a situation like this,” Gathje said. “It’s no secret that we are very much engaged in the public policy debate on a number of controversial issues. But we never expected that we would be denied service at a restaurant based on our religious values or political beliefs.”

For businesses like restaurants, federal and state laws do not allow discrimination based on protected classes such as race, religion, sex and more, as defined by the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

It’s not yet clear if this incident falls under one of those protected classes.

It pretty clearly does fall under the class “religion,” I would say. The restaurant clearly violated the plain meaning of the law.

Don’t get me wrong; I happen to believe that the restaurant should be allowed to refuse service to customers. Not because I believe that the restaurant is doing the right thing–alienating customers and staking out positions on contentious issues might be considered bad business, and canceling a reservation with an hour’s notice for a group meeting is a jerk move.

But in principle I think business owners should be allowed to choose with whom they do business, especially if they have a moral objection to the basis for the meeting.

But that isn’t the point.

The business clearly violated the rights of the group, which is a protected class. The case is far easier to determine than the 303 Creative one. The Family Foundation is not trying to compel the restaurant to engage in pro-Family activity, but only to serve exactly the same food as they do to everybody else.

And religious affiliation and beliefs are as legally protected as race or sex. Clear case. Open and shut.

But the discrimination is against a group that is currently out of favor these days; no Lefty would criticize discriminating against hateful Christians with traditional values. They are the wrong sort and should be punished for it. Their beliefs are as despised by the right set as melanin-enriched skin was in 1950s Alabama.

In a Facebook post the following day, Metzger wrote that the restaurant has “very rarely refused service to anyone who wished to dine with us.”

However, the restaurant added, “We have always refused service to anyone for making our staff feel uncomfortable and unsafe and this was the driving force behind our decision.”

The restaurant noted that many staff members were LGBTQ or women and that it believed the Family Foundation “seeks to deprive women and LGBTQ+ persons of their basic rights in Virginia.”

Gathje has previously written for the Family Foundation about a stalled effort in 2021 to remove an unenforceable provision of the Virginia Constitution — invalidated by the U.S. Supreme Court in 2015 — that defines marriage as between one man and one woman, saying that removing it would open the door to “polygamous, incestuous, kinship or even child marriages.”

In the 303 Creative case the state is trying to force a web designer to make graphic art and web sites for homosexual marriages, to which the owner of the company religiously objects. The case is based upon the premise that a business cannot pick and choose customers based upon their religious convictions, even if they are being forced to engage in compelled speech.

Sound familiar? Pretty much the same situation here, only the positions are reversed. It is the religious group denied service.

It will be interesting to see if any smart reporter has the wit to quiz the ACLU about their opinion on this matter. Would they be willing to defend the Family Foundation should they choose to bring a lawsuit?

Want to place any bets?