Mississippi’s Anti-Gay ‘Religious Freedom’ License to Discriminate Law Goes to Court Again

Law Allows Anyone to Discriminate Against Anyone They Think Violates Their Belief Marriage Is Between One Man and One Woman

Attorneys for 12 people and a church have just requested the full 5th Circuit Court of Appeals review en banc a three-judge panel’s ruling that allowed Mississippi’s “religious freedom” law, HB 1523, to go into effect. Called by many a “license to discriminate,” the law allows anyone to refuse service to anyone the believe is LGBT, is part of a same-sex couple, supports people who are LGBT, has had pre-marital sex, believes pre-marital sex is OK, is transgender, or believes being transgender is OK.

The law was barred from going into effect last year by a federal judge who called it “state-sanctioned discrimination,” but last month the 5th Circuit tossed the ruling, saying the plaintiffs who sued did not have standing because none could demonstrate they had been harmed by the law itself. 

“Standing is not about who wins and who loses, but who has access to justice,” Beth Orlansky, advocacy director for the Mississippi Center for Justice, said. MCJ and Lambda Legal Thursday filed the 11th Circuit request.

“The panel’s decision to reverse the district court ruling begs the question of who gets to challenge laws in court and when. LGBT Mississippians should not have to endure even more profound discrimination before they can ask the court for help,” said Susan Sommer, Director of Constitutional Litigation at Lambda Legal. “Mississippi’s HB 1523 is an extreme discrimination law dressed up in religious clothes.”

Judge Carlton Reeves, who blocked the law from going into effect last year had written, “HB 1523’s absence does not impair the free exercise of religion.”

“In addition,” Reeves noted at the time, “issuing 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.”

The lead attorney fighting HB 1523Rob McDuff, says the law, “bestows special rights on people who hold certain religious views and not on people who hold other religious views, and it encourages discrimination against LBGT Mississippians, who have as much right to be here as anybody else. It is unfair and unconstitutional and nothing about the panel’s decision regarding the doctrine of standing changes that.” 

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Image by Blake Feldman via Twitter

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