Religious Exemptions Increase Discrimination Towards Same-Sex Couples: Evidence from Masterpiece Cakeshop

Abstract

In 2018, the Supreme Court decided Masterpiece Cakeshop v. Colorado Civil Rights Commission in favor of a baker who refused service to a same-sex couple due to his religious beliefs. This article examines the behavioral effect of this decision in an experiment (N=1,155 businesses) that measured discrimination towards same-sex couples in the field of wedding services shortly before and after Masterpiece. I find that Masterpiece significantly reduced the agreement to provide services to same-sex couples as compared with heterosexual couples, even among vendors that provided this service before the decision. Considering the variety and number of vendors involved in a typical wedding, I estimate the odds that same-sex couples would experience discrimination post-Masterpiece between 61% and 85%. The effect is significantly more pronounced in religiously dense environments. These results discredit the frequently-made argument that religious exemptions will not expand discrimination. Instead, the Masterpiece experiment shows that even a narrowly construed exemption can have a significant and robust, even if inadvertent impact on a market and its customers. I discuss the implications of these results for the research on Supreme Court effects on the public.

Keywords: Religious Exemptions, Marriage Equality, Sexual Orientation Discrimination, Field experiments, Weddings, Public Accommodations, Court Effects

JEL Classification: H42, K23, K10, K19