"Masterpiece Cakeshop, at the direction of Phillips, refused to sell a birthday cake to Ms. Scardina because of her status as a transgender woman," the complaint states.
Paula Griesen, one of the attorneys representing Scardina, said that "the dignity of all citizens in our state needs to be honored," according to the National Review. "Masterpiece Cakeshop said before the Supreme Court they would serve any baked good to members of the LGBTQ community. It was just the religious significance of it being a wedding cake. We don't believe they've been honest with the public."
The cake Scardina mentions in the new complaint is notably similar to the gender transition cake Scardina requested from Masterpiece Cakeshop in 2017, which was also requested to be made with pink cake and blue frosting.
Phillips was first sued for a declined cake in 2012, after declining to make a cake celebrating the union of a same-sex couple. Phillips said that particular kind of cake would violate his religious beliefs, but that he would create other kinds of cakes for the couple. Colorado law did not recognize same-sex unions as marriages at the time.
The couple filed a lawsuit against Phillips and in 2013 a Colorado judge sided with the plaintiffs. Phillips chose to stop serving wedding cakes at his shop in order to avoid further litigation.
The Colorado Civil Rights Commission then took up the case, and ruled that Phillips had violated the state's anti-discrimination law, which categorizes sexual orientation as a protected class, by refusing to make the cake. The case made it all the way to the Supreme Court, which ruled in 2018 that Phillips has a right to refuse to create cakes that expressed messages contrary to his religious beliefs.
Phillips has said in the past that he not only has declined same-sex union cakes, but he also declines other types of cakes that go against his beliefs, including cakes for Halloween, bachelor parties, divorce, cakes with alcohol in the ingredients, and cakes with atheist messages.
Jim Campbell, senior counsel for Alliance Defending Freedom, whose lawyers have defended Phillips in the past, said the new lawsuit is another example of Phillips' harassment for his religious beliefs.
"So this latest attack by Scardina looks like yet another desperate attempt to harass cake artist Jack Phillips," Campbell said, according to the National Review. "And it stumbles over the one detail that matters most: Jack serves everyone; he just cannot express all messages through his custom cakes."