This definitely has consequences for Texas.
A federal judge stopped Mississippi’s controversial “religious freedom” law Thursday night, minutes before it was set to take effect.
In a opinion that cited scripture and Mississippi’s segregationist past, U.S. District Court Judge Carlton Reeves said House Bill 1523, signed by Gov. Phil Bryant in April, was another unfortunate example of Mississippi trying to write discrimination into its laws.
“Religious freedom was one of the building blocks of this great nation, and after the nation was torn apart, the guarantee of equal protection under law was used to stitch it back together. But HB 1523 does not honor that tradition of religion freedom, nor does it respect the equal dignity of all of Mississippi’s citizens,” Reeves wrote in his opinion.
For opponents of the law, Reeves’s ruling was a triumph over a bill that they believe used religion as a Trojan horse to sneak discrimination into state law.
“Our state legislature has no business passing a law that gives protections to one set of religious beliefs over another. When there is no separation of church and state, there is no freedom of religion,” Carol Burnett, a United Methodist minister in Biloxi and plaintiff in one of the lawsuits, said in a statement released after Judge Reeves’s opinion.
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Attorney General Jim Hood, the only Democrat holding statewide office, said he will appeal Reeves’s decision earlier this week saying circuit clerk’s cannot recuse themselves from issuing marriage licenses to gays because, as Hood noted, the clerks were never parties to the suit.
But Hood said he’s undecided about whether he will appeal the decision handed down Thursday night. He said he he has major reservations about the merits of the lawsuit — and the origins of the law.
“I can’t pick my clients, but I can speak for myself as a named defendant in this lawsuit. The fact is that the churchgoing public was duped into believing that HB 1523 protected religious freedoms,” Hood said in a statement.
“Our state leaders attempted to mislead pastors into believing that if this bill were not passed, they would have to preside over gay wedding ceremonies. No court case has ever said a pastor did not have discretion to refuse to marry any couple for any reason. I hate to see politicians continue to prey on people who pray, go to church, follow the law and help their fellow man.”
House Bill 1523 singles out three “sincerely held” religious beliefs as worthy of protection: that marriage is between one man and one woman; that people should not have sex outside such marriages; and that a person’s gender is set at birth. The law protects from litigation anyone who speaks out against gay marriage or transgender individuals because of these beliefs.
It was the second time Reeves ruled against HB 1523 this week. In a separate decision Monday, Reeves indicated that he would invalidate the part that allowed clerks to recuse themselves from issuing marriage licenses to same-sex couples. But that ruling didn’t address any other aspects of the law, which was set to go into effect July 1. Private business owners, such as caterers, and other state officials, such as public school counselors, were still allowed to refuse marriage-related services to gay, lesbian and transgender Mississippians.
Thursday’s ruling, however, invalidates every facet of House Bill 1523. The two lawsuits it addresses, Barber v. Bryant and Campaign for Southern Equality v. Bryant III, took aim at the whole law by arguing it violated the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment and the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. These prohibit government from favoring one religion over another and one group of citizens over another, respectively.
“(House Bill 1523) said that those three religious beliefs and no others get preeminence in Mississippi, and if you share one or more of them then you essentially get a free pass to do whatever the hell you want, no matter how discriminatory or offensive it is to your gay and lesbian neighbors,” said Roberta Kaplan, lead attorney on the Campaign for Southern Equality lawsuits.
“And because it has those elements, it is clearly, in our view and Judge Reeves’s view, a violation of this fundamental principle, one of the principles our country really was founded on,” Kaplan said. “It can’t preference one religion over another, it can’t take sides in religious debate, it needs to stay neutral. And that’s exactly what this statute does, it’s kind of a classic establishment clause violation.”
You can see a copy of the ruling here. As Mark Joseph Stern writes in Slate, this is such a bad loss for anti-LGBT activists that it calls into question their entire post-Obergefell strategy. And that is relevant to Texas because as we know those forces have big plans for the next legislative session. I doubt this will make them seriously reconsider anything – as we well know, objective reality is not their strong suit – but it draws a clear roadmap for the plaintiffs and attorneys that will line up to challenge their efforts in court. If this does get appealed, that goes to the Fifth Circuit, so if they uphold Judge Reeves’ decision, it would apply to Texas as well. All in all, a very good thing. Link via Daily Kos.