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What is Open to All Week?

Learn more about the Piggie Park decision and how creating a constitutional license to discriminate in Masterpiece could undermine that historic ruling against discrimination.

Open to All Week is March 12 through March 18, 2018, which coincides with the 50th anniversary of a landmark case, Newman v. Piggie Park Enterprises. This case is an important part of our nation’s Civil Rights history and our nation’s principle that businesses that are open to the public should be open to everyone on the same terms. Piggie Park, a small barbeque chain which is still open today, wanted the right to refuse service to African American customers. The owner, a segregationist, claimed that the Civil Rights Act violated his religious freedom. The Supreme Court disagreed in a landmark decision issued on March 18, 1968.

Now the nation awaits a decision in Masterpiece Cakeshop v. Colorado Civil Rights Commission, in which a Colorado bakery that discriminated against a gay couple in violation of Colorado law is claiming it should be exempt from the state’s nondiscrimination law due to the religious beliefs of its owner.

Piggie Park wasn’t just about barbeque. And Masterpiece isn’t just about cake.

A win for the bakery in Masterpiece threatens the historic legacy of the Piggie Park decision and could take us back to a shameful era in our nation’s history, an era where businesses could claim a right to discriminate as they see fit. The stakes of this case couldn’t be higher—not just for LGBT people, but for people of color, minority faiths, people with disabilities, and women. Because if a bakery can discriminate against same-sex couples, it won’t stop with bakeries, or with same-sex couples.

Businesses and their owners have a right to their religious beliefs—but that freedom shouldn’t give businesses a license to discriminate.

Join the chorus of Americans who reject discrimination, join Open to All.

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