Colorado's Supreme Court threw out a lawsuit Tuesday against a Christian baker who refused to make a pink-and-blue cake for a transgender woman who said she wanted it to celebrate her transition.

The Centennial State's high court rebuffed the suit on procedural grounds in a 6-3 opinion.

Masterpiece Cakeshop proprietor Jack Phillips had been sued by attorney Autumn Scardina, who is transgender, in 2017 as part of an antidiscrimination claim. Phillips is famous for declining to make a cake for a same-sex wedding in 2012, which turned into a national case that wound up before the US Supreme Court.

"Enough is enough. Jack has been dragged through courts for over a decade. It's time to leave him alone," his attorney, Alliance for Defending Freedom senior counsel Jake Warner, said in a statement.

"Because that cake admittedly expresses a message, and because Jack cannot express that message for anyone, the government cannot punish Jack for declining to express it."

Ultimately, the Colorado Supreme Court concluded that Scardina did not exhaust all possible administrative avenues for relief before suing Phillips.

Justices on the state's high court, all of whom were appointed by Democrats, wrote that "Scardina improperly filed her claim anew in the district court," with the majority opinion by Justice Melissa Hart stressing: "We express no view on the merits of these claims."

Prior to lodging the lawsuit against Phillips, Scardina filed a complaint against the baker with the Colorado Civil Rights Commission.

In 2019, Phillips and the state agreed to drop the matter, prompting Scardina to file the lawsuit.

Tuesday's state Supreme Court opinion found that Scardina needed to challenge the settlement before suing Phillips.

Justices said in the 6-3 majority opinion that Scardina had not exhausted her options to seek redress through another court before filing her lawsuit.

Scardina's lawyer John McHugh ripped the ruling, chiding that justices "decided to avoid the merits of this issue by inventing an argument no party raised."

Justices in the minority echoed that sentiment, arguing that their peers' opinion "erroneously gives Masterpiece and Phillips a procedural pass."

"It does so by concluding that the district court lacked the authority to hear Scardina's case, relying on reasoning that no party presented in this case," Justice Richard Gabriel wrote.

The Colorado Anti-Discrimination Act bars businesses from discriminating against customers on the grounds of "disability, race, creed, color, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, gender expression, marital status, national origin, or ancestry."

Scardina initially commissioned the cake from Phillips' Denver-area bakery when the US Supreme Court said it would take up Phillips' challenge against a Colorado Civil Rights Commission decision that concluded he discriminated by refusing to make the gay wedding cake more than a decade ago.

The high court later sided with Phillips in Masterpiece Cakeshop v. Colorado Civil Rights Commission, finding that the state panel did not exhibit religious neutrality in its decision.

Scardina claimed that her goal in ordering the cake was to undercut Phillips' assertion that he would still provide services for LGBTQ+ patrons.
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