Judge Carlton Reeves of the Southern Mississippi U.S. District Court had initially refused to block the state’s controversial LGBT discrimination bill H.B. This was one of more than 200 bills that lawmakers in the United States have introduced this year to limit the rights of LGBT people, and one of only a small handful that passed.
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Matthew Kacsmaryk, deputy general counsel for First Liberty Institute, said he expected Reeves’ ruling to be overturned because it was based on a mistaken notion that laws must be stricken if they reflect a particular religious practice or belief. I am disappointed Judge Reeves did not recognize that reality.
“HB 1523 grants special rights to citizens who hold one of three “sincerely held religious beliefs or moral convictions” reflecting disapproval of lesbian, gay, transgender, and unmarried persons”, Reeves wrote, as Buzzfeed’s Chris Geidner reported overnight.
HB 1523 opponents breathed a sigh of relief collectively after the 11th hour ruling blocked the law from going into effect.
Enshrining these beliefs in law would have granted religious organizations the right to lawfully deny gay or lesbian couples marriage licenses, jobs, counseling, foster care services, or adoption.
The preliminary injunction will hold until any appeals are completed. It would allow clerks to cite religious objections to recuse themselves from issuing marriage licenses to same-sex couples.
Tennessee’s governor in April signed a bill allowing mental health counselors to refuse to treat patients based on the therapist’s religious or personal beliefs. Any private business owner could refuse service to anyone they perceived to be gay by citing the above religious beliefs.
Polling has repeatedly shown that a larger share of Mississippians identify as “very religious” than in any other state.
Both Gov. Phil Bryant and Lt. Gov. Tate Reeves, two of the bill’s most prominent advocates, said the state should stand by its law and appeal the ruling to the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.
On Thursday night, Reeves went further and ruled on the law as a whole.
Reeves, however, noted that MS residents already have “substantial religious rights” under existing state law.
Roberta Kaplan, an attorney who filed one of the lawsuits challenging the MS law, said in a statement that Reeves “enforced the fundamental constitutional principle that the government can not establish any religion”.
Reeves said Mississippi’s law was a direct response to the Supreme Court’s 2015 decision to legalize same-sex marriage in all 50 states.
“The judge was asking the state, what were the nonreligious reasons for this bill?”
As the Two-Way has previously reported, the “Protecting Freedom of Conscience from Government Discrimination Act” was described by its proponents as a religious freedom bill. And they said, ‘Well, Obergefell tipped the tables of justice away from people who are against gay marriage’.
The law’s author, Philip Gunn, the Republican speaker of Mississippi’s House, also expressed dismay.
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The law protects from litigation anyone who speaks out against gay marriage or transgender individuals because of these beliefs. As the evening wore on and no news came, Hrostowski’s hopes sank. The ACLU of MS will continue to stand firmly against discrimination and in solidarity with the LGBT community. “This bill, it’s the death throes of the religious right that doesn’t know what to do with itself now that it’s lost, and lost miserably”.
