Some welcome news to wake up to:
Mississippi’s HB 1523, a law specifically outlining legal ways for people to discriminate against LGBT people, was set to take effect Friday, but Thursday night, a federal judge granted a preliminary injunction preventing it from doing so.
U.S. District Judge Carlton Reeves, who previously ruled against Mississippi’s bans on same-sex marriage and adoption, concluded that HB1523 violated both the First Amendment and Fourteenth Amendment of the Constitution by favoring one set of religious beliefs over others. Reeves’s decision responds to several suits that were filed immediately following the law’s passage.
This is why elections are important. Reeves is an Obama appointee who has decided several notable cases—such as the MS gay marriage ban being unconstitutional; and sentencing 3 White men for a racially motivated murder.
Reeves used Romer v. Evans in his opinion, stating that “a law declaring that in general it shall be more difficult for one group of citizens than for all others to seek aid from the government is itself a denial of equal protection of the laws in the most literal sense.”
“A closer analogue is difficult to imagine,” Reeves wrote. What makes the comparison particularly easy is the fact that included in HB 1523’s catalog of discrimination is a plan for the state’s clerks to recuse themselves from issuing marriage licenses to same-sex couples. “It is therefore difficult to accept the State’s implausible assertion that HB 1523 was intended to protect certain religious liberties and simultaneously ignore that the bill was passed because same-sex marriage was legalized last summer.”
Reeves was also unpersuaded by the state’s arguments that it wasn’t imposing religious beliefs on LGBT and unmarried people: “The enactment of HB 1523 is much more than a ‘psychological consequence’ with which they disagree, it is allegedly an endorsement and elevation by their state government of specific religious beliefs over theirs and all others.” Indeed, the law conveys the State’s “disapproval and diminution” of all other religious beliefs and sends the message that they are not welcome in the political community or worthy of governmental protection.
He also discussed the history of the Establishment Clause, writing that the Clause was written to protect Christians from other Christians.
“Americans were weary of the British and then Colonial back-and-forth between Catholics and Protestants, Episcopalians and Presbyterians, and so on. It was better to have a neutral government than to constantly struggle for power — or live under the yoke of a rival sect for decades at a time.”
This context makes HB 1523’s violation all the more obvious. “If three specific beliefs are ‘protected by this act,’ it follows that every other religious belief a citizen holds is not protected by the act. Christian Mississippians with religious beliefs contrary to [HB 1523] become second-class Christians.”
Every group has its iconoclasts. The larger the group, the more likely it will have someone who believes the sun revolves around the Earth, a doctor who thinks smoking unproblematic, or a Unitarian opposed to same-sex religious marriage. But most people in a group share most of that group’s beliefs. That is the point of being in a group. And in the HB 1523 context, the State has favored certain doctrines, regardless of how many individuals deviate from official doctrine on an issue.
Reeves also took into account comments made by lawmakers when HB 1523 was considered. He concluded that contrary to the “official” argument presented in the trial, which was to “address the denigration and disfavor religious persons felt in the wake of Obergefell“, the law’s intent was to “put LGBT citizens back in their place after Obergefell. The majority of Mississippians were granted special rights to not serve LGBT citizens, and were immunized from the consequences of their actions.”
“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. It must be enjoined.”
While this doesn’t strike the law from the books, the injunction prevents it from being enforced. And, it’s also a harbinger of things to come. Knowing Mississippi, they are likely to appeal this all the way to the Supreme Court.
Another reason to flip the Senate and hold the White House.