The Politics of Cookies

Most businesses that deal directly with the public, and especially in food service and the like, will have a notice posted somewhere that tells potential customers “We reserve the right to refuse service to anyone.” Most of the time this isn’t really a warning so much as it is a disclaimer; in the event that a restaurant has to bounce a drunk, or a retailer has to eject a disruptive customer, they can point to the notice and invoke that right without having to start explaining why, exactly, they no longer want to do business with that individual. Since most businesses are unlikely to tell paying customers to go away (and take their money with them!), this isn’t usually a legal issue; if the company gets too obnoxious about who it is refusing to serve people will just boycott it, and it will go quietly bankrupt. But what happens when the firm’s landlord has a written policy of its own – one which requires the firm to take on specific customers or lose their lease? There’s a case in Indianapolis from this past summer that asks that very question…

According to the story available at Indy Star.com a small food operation in the Indianapolis City Market called “Just Cookies” was approached by a customer about providing specially decorated cookies for an upcoming event. Because the event was “National Coming Out Day” at Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis, and because the people who run the cookie stand are social conservatives who were uncomfortable about the event, they declined the offer. That should have been the end of the story, especially because Just Cookies stopped doing special orders for decorated cookies some time ago (apparently they sell enough of their basic product each day to keep busy). Unfortunately, one of the owners was unwise enough to tell the event organizer that he was not comfortable supplying product to them for this purpose, and the whole story exploded across news outlets far and wide…

Now, I’m not going to comment on whether or not this constitutes discrimination in any absolute sense; that’s for a court to decide, assuming somebody wants to bring suit. Certainly, refusing to do business with a demographic group that constitutes a large percentage of the customers in your operational area is stupid, and potentially enough to destroy the company, through bad public relations if not through lost sales. But Just Cookies isn’t the only bakery in the area, and they claim not to be in this part of the field anyway; it’s not as if this action is actually preventing the event organizers from getting cookies, let alone keeping them from putting on their festival. If the owners can violate the First Rule of Business this badly and remain solvent they clearly have the right to do so; after all, I suppose even homophobic bigots have to get their cookies from somewhere. What makes this case complicated is that the City Market is owned by the City of Indianapolis, and the City has a strict anti-discrimination policy; as a result, the City is now considering evicting Just Cookies…

As a result of this dispute, a situation has developed where civil rights groups and gay-rights advocates are calling for boycotts of the company, conservative political groups and business advocates are calling for everyone else to support the bakery and the owners, and the politicians are starting to weigh in, each according to his (or her) own constituency and power base. Personally, I can’t help thinking that if the owner of Just Cookies had just politely told the event organizer that we’re not taking any special decorating jobs this month and not gone into extraneous information about his moral values or desire to shield his two young daughters from knowing that there are gay people in the world (or Indianapolis, anyway), none of this would have happened and you and I would never have heard this story…

Which only goes to prove that it’s possible to run a business, and it’s possible to impose your political/social/gender values on other people, but it’s really difficult to do both at the same time – and you probably shouldn’t try…