JACKSON, Miss. — U.S. District Judge Carlton Reeves late Thursday night issued an injunction blocking a bill by the Mississippi legislature that would have allowed private citizens and some public officials professing a “sincere religious belief” to deny services to gays and lesbians.
Just minutes before House Bill 1523 was to take effect at midnight, Reeves eviscerated the bill – the most sweeping attempt by a state to undermine the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2015 decision to legalize gay marriage – as being in violation of the First and Fourteenth Amendments.
“The state has put its thumb on the scale to favor some religious beliefs over others. Showing such favor tells ‘nonadherents that they are outsiders, not full members of the political community, and . . . adherents that they are insiders, favored members of the political community.’ ” Reeves wrote, citing precedent. “And the Equal Protection Clause is violated by HB 1523’s authorization of arbitrary discrimination against lesbian, gay, transgender, and unmarried persons.”
“The plaintiffs’ motions are granted and HB 1523 is preliminarily enjoined.”
Coupled with a ruling Reeves filed earlier in the week – preventing circuit clerks from denying marriage licenses to same-sex couples – the proposed law is, for the moment, stillborn.
The preliminary injunction will hold until any appeals are completed. Then, if upheld, they will be filed as permanent injunctions.
“The federal court’s decision recognizes that religious freedom can be preserved along with equal rights for all people regardless of race, religion, or sexual orientation,” Robert McDuff, attorney for one of four groups to file suit against the bill.
Reeves’ decision comes 20 months after he struck down Mississippi’s statutory and constitutional bans against same-sex marriages. It comes three months after U.S. District Court Judge Daniel Porter Jordan III, in the same Jackson courthouse, struck down the state’s ban against gay couples adopting children.
Taken together, the three rulings – from judges appointed by George W. Bush and by Barack Obama – compose a devastating, Civil Rights-era style rebuke by the federal government against the former Confederate state long viewed as having the nation’s most violent and oppressive history in dealing with African-Americans and other minorities.
Roberta Kaplan, the New York-based attorney who represented plaintiffs in both the adoption case and HB1523, invoked the state’s racially segregated history in hearings in late June as a comparison to the proposed law.
“There can’t be separate but equal marriage,” she told Reeves. “There can’t be Jim Crow kind of gay marriage in the state of Mississippi.”
Reaction from state leaders was not immediately available when the ruling came down just before midnight. None of the state’s top three officials posted statements on their social media accounts.
But Republican Lt. Gov. Tate Reeves (no relation) had said earlier in the week that he hoped the state would appeal the judge’s initial injunction.
“If this opinion by the federal court denies even one Mississippian of their fundamental right to practice their religion, then all Mississippians are denied their First Amendment rights,” he said in a statement. I hope the state’s attorneys will quickly appeal this decision to the 5th Circuit to protect the deeply held religious beliefs of all Mississippians.”
