‘We Feel Like We Shouldn’t Have To Pay’: Sweet Cakes Bakers Say State Order Not ‘Legally Binding’

The owners of Sweet Cakes by Melissa are refusing to pay damages of $135,000 to a lesbian couple, and now say they’re not going to because they don’t feel the state bureau has the authority to decide.

Melissa Klein, and her husband Aaron in July were ordered to pay a same-sex couple $135,000 in damages “for emotional suffering stemming directly from unlawful discrimination.” That was the final order of Oregon’s Bureau of Labor and Industry (BOLI), on July 2, after the Kleins discriminated against Laurel and Rachel Bowman-Cryer, who wanted a wedding cake.

Last week NCRM reported that the Kleins were in arrears, and the State of Oregon was asking them to pay, noting they were the beneficiaries of crowd-funding and direct donations totaling about a half-million dollars.

On their Facebook page last week the Kleins wrote, “we aren’t going to comment publicly about this story because it concerns matters that are attorney-client privileged and relate to the strategy of our case going forward. As we said a few months ago, we are having to be cautious and wise in our use of the funds raised on our behalf because of potential tax liability and other variables over which we have no control.”

But they’ve changed their minds, and gave an interview to Glenn Beck’s TheBlaze on Monday.

“We feel like we shouldn’t have to pay when we haven’t even gotten due process,” Melissa Klein told TheBlaze’s Billy Hallowell. “We also feel like we’re taking a stand for the next person … that this could happen to. We don’t want to set a precedent.”

LOOK: Almost Everything You’ve Heard About The Anti-Gay Sweet Cakes Wedding Cake Case Is (Probably) Wrong

But the BOLI has a history of awarding damages in discrimination cases, and even noted in its July announcement of the $135,000 damages decision that in “an earlier ruling against a Bend dentist… BOLI awarded a Christian employee $325,000 in damages for physical, mental and emotion suffering due to religious discrimination and harassment.”

“We want to fight this, and we want to fight this all the way,” Klein added, and noted they are holding onto the $500,000 or so in donations for the future.

“Right now, we’re not touching that money, because we don’t know what the future holds,” Klein said. “We don’t know what’s going to come of all of this. We’re in the appeal process.”

The Kleins have decided they do not respect the authority of Oregon’s BOLI.

“There’s legal reasons and there’s also kind of personal reasons,” Aaron Klein told the Heritage Foundation’s website, the Daily Signal. “If a civil court or a circuit court judge had made this order, I would consider it legally binding. But when a bureaucracy does it and I didn’t get due process, I don’t call it legally binding.”

 

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Final Verdict In Oregon Bakers Case Comes To $135,000 – Right Wing Furious Over ‘Gay Fascism Tax’

 

Image: Screenshot via YouTube