N.Y. farm appeals $13,000 fine for refusing lesbian couple's wedding
Christian Science Monitor is reporting:
ALBANY, N.Y. - The owners of an upstate New York wedding venue who were fined $13,000 after refusing to host a lesbian wedding are appealing the ruling.
The owners of Liberty Ridge Farm north of Albany refused to host the 2013 wedding of Melisa and Jennie McCarthy, citing their Christian beliefs that marriage is between a man and a woman. The state's Division of Human Rights ruled that business owned by Robert and Cynthia Gifford violated New York's anti-discrimination law. . .
. . . [Judge] Pares fined Liberty Ridge Farm $10,000 for violating the state's non-discrimination law, and ordered Gifford to pay an additional $3,000 to the couple for "mental anguish each suffered as a result of respondents' unlawfully discriminatory conduct."
The Giffords' lawyer, James Trainor, said at the time of the initial ruling that he was surprised the judge did not incorporate the U.S. Supreme Court's recent Hobby Lobby decision, in which justices said a closely-held company could deny some forms of contraception to its employees because they conflicted with the religious beliefs of its owners.