When Jack Phillips opened Masterpiece Cakeshop in 1993, he never envisioned that he would become a household name defending religious freedom against an increasingly expansive vision of LGBT rights.

Yet the Christian baker has found himself, for the third time, at the center of a lawsuit over his refusal to create custom cakes that would send messages that he says are antithetical to his religious beliefs.

In 2018, Phillips partially won a case before the Supreme Court over his refusal to make a custom wedding cake for a same-sex couple. The high court ruled that the Colorado Civil Rights Commission showed anti-religious bias in sanctioning Phillips for his refusal to make the cake, though the justices did not rule on whether businesses can refuse services to gays or lesbians over religious objections.

In the years since that case began, in 2012, the Colorado bakery has received hundreds of requests for cakes with “offensive messages, many of them with an intent to set him up,” said Kristen Waggoner, general counsel at the Alliance Defending Freedom, a nonprofit that has helped Phillips with his ongoing legal battles for the past nine years.

In a recent interview with National Review, Phillips says the backlash is something he never could have imagined and noted that it has been tough on his wife and daughter, who have had to suffer through numerous trials and have been overwhelmed by threatening phone calls and emails.

"This is not something that you would envision or ever step into intentionally, I don't think," he said.

Now Phillips is back in court, facing a lawsuit from a transgender lawyer, Autumn Scardina, who attempted to order a birthday cake from Masterpiece Cakeshop that was blue on the outside and pink on the inside in honor of her gender transition. The request came on the same day in 2017 that the Supreme Court announced it would hear Phillips's appeal in the wedding-cake case.

Scardina said during a virtual trial on Monday that she attempted to order the birthday cake as a test to see whether Phillips would make good on his assertion that he would sell any other type of product but opposed making a gay couple's wedding cake because, as a Christian, he was opposed to the religious ceremony involved, according to CBS Denver.

Her lawyer, Paula Greisen, claimed the call was not a "setup" but rather "more of calling someone's bluff."

Yet Phillips says Scardina began contacting the bakery back in 2012, sending emails calling the baker a bigot and a hypocrite and requesting that the shop make a red and black custom cake that depicted Satan smoking a marijuana joint.

"In a conversation, this person said that if this case was dismissed or if we won for any reason that they would be right back the very next day, to call and request another cake and sue us again,” he said.

After Scardina requested the gender-transition cake, Phillips told her that he "would be happy to create other cakes, different custom cakes or that that person would be welcome to come in our shop and purchase anything from our showcase, but that was a cake that we could not create."

"It’s the message of the cake that we’re considering. It’s never the person that’s ordering it," Phillips explained, adding that he has a number of LGBTQ customers who are regulars at the shop.

When the cakeshop opened nearly 30 years ago, Phillips and his wife sat down and set ground rules regarding the types of cakes that they would — and would not — create.

The pair decided that, because of their deeply held Christian beliefs, they would not make cakes that celebrate Halloween or divorce, or any cakes that disparage America or any people. While they would be happy to serve anyone, they would not create custom cakes that would send the message that they supported events or decisions that went against their religious beliefs, such as same-sex weddings or gender transitions.

Now, Waggoner says the spate of suits attempting to force Phillips to create cakes with messages that he does not agree with are an example of "the law and the system of justice being weaponized essentially as an arm of cancel culture."

"It’s being used to ruin people with whom one disagrees, and Jack has been targeted and harassed relentlessly for almost a decade now, simply because he won’t express a message that violates his convictions," she said.

Phillips lost 40 percent of his business and more than half of his employees during his first case — income that he has not regained. He has also not been able to resume creating custom artwork for weddings.

As the latest trial got underway this week, he was forced to shut down the cake shop because the only two full-time staffers at the bakery — Phillips and his daughter — both attended the virtual proceedings.

The trial is the latest step in a legal saga that began in 2017, when Scardina filed a complaint against the cake shop for refusing to create the gender-transition cake. The next year the Colorado Civil Rights Commission picked up that complaint and brought charges against Phillips and his shop.

Phillips then sued the state in federal court, and the government dismissed the charges against him in March 2019.

In June 2019, Scardina filed a new lawsuit against Phillips and Masterpiece Cakeshop in Colorado state court. A number of the claims in the suit are similar to those raised in the case that was previously dismissed, according to the ADF.

However, Scardina chose not to appeal the Commission's dismissal. Her new lawsuit instead seeks damages, fines, and attorney fees, which threaten to inflict further financial damage on Phillips and his business.

Yet Phillips maintains it is "worth it to fight."

"These are important freedoms for everybody, the freedoms that everybody cherishes,” he said. “I’m sure all liberty-loving Americans cherish their right to speak what they want and to worship the way they want . . . and they all deserve the right to be able to work and live according to their conscience without fear of being punished by the government," he said.

Tolerance “has to be a two-way street,” Waggoner added.

“Diversity is a defining characteristic of our nation, and we are going to destroy it by forcing people to say things that violate their core beliefs,” she said.

“Today it’s Jack, but tomorrow it could easily be any one of us.”