The judge who stopped Mississippi’s homophobic and transphobic religious exemption from going into effect also refused to allow the state to enforce it while they appeal to higher courts.
HB 1523, signed by Republican Governor Phil Bryant in April, is considered one of the most dangerous religious freedom laws in the country. It gives anyone with a “sincerely held religious belief” a blank check to refuse services to LGBT individuals. The bill was immediately challenged in federal district court.
U.S. District Court Judge Carlton Reeves ruled that the bill violated the Constitutional rights of LGBT persons, and halted its enforcement.
Mississippi, of course, wants to appeal that ruling. During the appeal process, the powers that be want HB 1523 to be enacted as written until a final ruling can be made. That could take years.
Judge Reeves was having none of it. In his order denying the state’s appeal he wrote:
“[I]ssuing a marriage license to a gay couple is not like being forced into armed combat or to assist with an abortion. Matters of life and death are sui generis. If movants truly believe that providing services to LGBT citizens forces them to ‘tinker with the machinery of death,’ their animus exceeds anything seen in Romer, Windsor, or the marriage equality cases.”
Reeves ended the order by emphasizing that Mississippi was better off without HB 1523, and that meant both sides, the LGBT advocates and the bill’s proponents.
“The final element asks whether the public interest is served by a stay. It is not. In this case the public interest is better served by maintaining the status quo – a Mississippi without HB 1523. To the extent the preliminary injunction will help alleviate the damage wrought on this State by an HB 1523-caused economic boycott, moreover, that too supports denying a stay of the injunction.”
Governor Bryant and other state officials will now take their arguments to the 5th Circuit Federal Court of Appeals.
Watch a video describing the bill here:
Featured Image Via YouTube Screengrab.
