The U.S. Supreme Court ruled today that the Colorado Civil Rights Commission violated a baker’s free exercise rights when it ordered that he sell cakes to same-sex couples the same as he sells to heterosexual couples.

The ruling, written by the court’s long-time defender of equal rights for LGBT people, Justice Anthony Kennedy, marks a stunning setback for LGBT people on a broad scale.

The vote was 7 to 2, with only Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Sonia Sotomayor dissenting.

In his opinion, Kennedy accepts baker Jack Phillips’ claim that making a wedding cake requires the use of his “artistic skills to make an expressive statement, a wedding endorsement in his own voice and of his own creation.” He also notes that, at the time Phillips refused to sell a cake to the gay couple, in 2012, Colorado law banned recognition of marriage between same-sex couples.

“At the time of the events in question, this Court had not issued its decisions either in United States v. Windsor [striking down the federal Defense of Marriage Act] or Obergefell [striking state bans on marriage for same-sex couples]. Since the State itself did not allow those marriages to be performed in Colorado, there is some force to the argument that the baker was not unreasonable in deeming it lawful to decline to take an action that he understood to be an expression of support for their validity when that expression was contrary to his sincerely held religious beliefs, at least insofar as his refusal was limited to refusing to create and express a message in support of gay marriage, even one planned to take place in another State.”

Instead, said Kennedy, the state commission demonstrated “clear and impermissible hostility toward the sincere religious beliefs that motivated his objection.”

Perhaps to soften the blow of the decision, Kennedy noted, “Our society has come to the recognition that gay persons and gay couples cannot be treated as social outcasts or as inferior in dignity and worth. For that reason the laws and the Constitution can, and in some instances must, protect them in the exercise of their civil rights.”

The specific legal question was whether a person’s First Amendment right –to speech, religion, expression, or association— trumps laws prohibiting discrimination based on sexual orientation in public accommodations. Public accommodations include a wide variety of businesses serving the general public –restaurants, hotels, taxicabs, and funeral homes, to name a few. It’s a conflict that arose during the black civil rights movement, too, when white business owners in the south said their religious beliefs prevented them from serving black customers the same as white customers.

Kennedy has been a fairly reliable vote in support of equal rights for LGBT people in recent years. But during last December’s oral argument in this case, he seemed troubled by a remark made by a member of the Colorado Civil Rights Commission that Kennedy construed to be intolerant of religious beliefs. (The Commission member said: “Freedom of religion and religion has been used to justify all kinds of discrimination throughout history, whether it be slavery, whether it be the Holocaust…we can list hundreds of situations where freedom of religion has been used to justify discrimination. And, to me, it is one of the most despicable piece of rhetoric that people can use –to use their religion to hurt others.”

The decision will likely impact whether any common business vendor –a restaurant, a bakery, hotel, coffee shop, convenience store, or taxicab or car service, for instance – selling products or services to the public –can refuse to sell or accommodate LGBT persons by simply claiming to have a religious belief hostile to such persons.

In Masterpiece Cakeshop v. Colorado, a baker who prepares elaborate cakes for wedding receptions says that the mere act of selling any of his cakes for the reception of a same-sex couple amounts to “participating” in and supporting the wedding. The baker, Jack Phillips, claims to have a religious belief that opposes allowing marriage for same-sex couples. And he says that participating in a same-sex couple’s reception conflicts with that religious belief and his rights as an artist to create what he wants to create. The Alliance Defending Freedom, a group which is leading many legal fights to oppose equal rights for LGBT people, pressed Phillips’ case.

The same-sex couple is Charlie Craig and David Mullins. They were living in Colorado but married in Massachusetts in 2012, when the U.S. Supreme Court had not yet struck down state bans against marriage for same-sex couples (in Obergefell v. Hodges in 2015). After Phillips refused to sell them a cake for their reception, they filed a complaint with the Colorado Civil Rights Commission.

A state administrative judge, the Colorado Civil Rights Commission, and the Colorado Court of Appeals all ruled against Phillips. The Commission did not order Phillips to design cakes for same-sex weddings, as Phillips claimed, but rather it ordered that he stop “refusing to sell them wedding cakes or any product [the baker] would sell to heterosexual couples.” Colorado defended its law before the Supreme Court; the gay couple was represented by the ACLU.

The case essentially pits a state law prohibiting sexual orientation discrimination in public accommodations against a federal law (the First Amendment to the Constitution) forbidding laws “prohibiting the free exercise of religion” or “abridging the freedom of speech.” The state law in this case is Colorado’s, but 20 other states have laws to prevent discrimination against LGBT people. And all states have laws prohibiting discrimination based on race, sex, and other factors. The Colorado law, like those of most other states, exempts any entity “principally used for religious purposes.”

During oral argument last December, questions asked by the justices suggested the court was split 4 to 4 on the issue, with Justice Anthony Kennedy in his usual position as tie breaker. But some court observers interpreted the questions Kennedy asked as signaling his movement away from his established pro-LGBT trend.