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Another hot-button case the court has agreed to hear is Masterpiece Cakeshop, Ltd. v. Colorado Civil Rights Commission, in which a baker in Denver, Colorado, refused to bake a wedding cake for a gay couple.

Lower courts said that the owner of the bakery had violated the state’s public accommodations law, which prohibits refusing service to people based on their race, ethnicity, gender, and sexual orientation.

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Masterpiece Cakeshop bakers say that compelling them to create something that violates their sincerely held religious beliefs would violate their First Amendment right to free speech.

Public accommodation laws have historically governed restaurants, hotels and bathrooms, which are necessary for freedom to travel, for example. They have not historically been applied to other types of businesses.

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The court turned down a Second Amendment case that many gun-rights advocacy groups were hoping would be heard — a case challenging a local law in San Diego requiring gun owners to have a good reason to carry a concealed firearm. By declining to take the case, and also another one that challenged a federal law banning felons and some others from possessing firearms, the court in effect strengthened the hand of cities and states in restricting the right of people to protect themselves using guns.

The only other case the court announced today that it will take up in the fall concerns the whistleblower provision in the Dodd-Frank law.

The court will hear an appeal from Digital Realty Trust, a company that is fighting a lawsuit by a former vice president of the company who was fired after complaining that the company was violating securities laws. Dodd-Frank, signed into law in 2010, provided protections for whistleblowers and allows employees and other insiders to alert federal authorities to serious violations without risking their livelihoods. If the court sides with the company and against the employee, Paul Somers, public corporations could, in the future, be “insulated” from whistleblower lawsuits, according to Bloomberg.[lz_pagination]