Why are they calling 7-2 decision Narrow?

[Lee-Lee]

7. It's not the vote count, it's what the ruling said

It is a narrow ruling not based on votes, that would be a narrow victory, but based on what the court actually ruled on.

There was a huge issue before the courts.

They didn’t decide on the biggest, broadest parts of the question before them.

Instead, they only ruled that the procedures followed by the state were unconstitutional in that they ruled the bakers didn’t get a fair hearing because they said the hearing was biased.

That means they didn’t say the ruling was wrong, only that because the process used to reach it was inproper that it was overturned.

The state can go back and do it again with a process they seem to be more “unbiased” and reach the same conclusion and it’s fine.

So the ruling is “narrow” because instead of answering the large, overarching question before them they picked one tiny bit that didn’t answer the big question and only reversed the ruling based on that.