Judge blocks Mississippi’s ‘religious objections’ law

He concluded by issuing a preliminary injunction against the law from taking effect.

Ron Matis, political liaison for the Mississippi District of the United Pentecostal Church, said he wasn’t surprised at Reeves’s ruling, citing Reeves’ earlier decision to overturn Mississippi’s ban on same-sex marriages.

However, state Health Department spokeswoman Liz Sharlot tells The Associated Press that the department no longer has any record of who filed the form.

Reeves filed orders in two lawsuits blocking the law before it was to take effect Friday.

The registrar works for the Health Department, and Sharlot says the department has no paper or electronic record of who submitted the form or where they work.

He also said the law was poised to cause irreparable harm to LGBT residents of Mississippi.

“We do not want hate in our state said Human Rights Campaign of Mississippi Director Rob Hill”. They are that marriage should only be between one man and one woman; that sexual intercourse should only happen in such a marriage; and that one’s gender is assigned at birth and can not be changed.

“Persons who hold contrary religious beliefs are unprotected”, he added.

Instead, it would create an array of protections specifically for those who believe that marriage is only for opposite-sex couples, that sexual relations are reserved for marriage, and that gender identity is determined immutably by anatomy at birth.

Supporters of the LGBT rights movement won the latest round against conservatives when a federal judge ruled that a MS “religious objections” law is unconstitutional, just moments before it was to take effect Friday.

Hood is the only Democrat in statewide office, and his staff had defended the law that was passed by the Republican-majority Legislature and signed by a Republican governor.

In his 60-page ruling, Reeves wrote that HB1523 “violates both the guarantee of religious neutrality and the promise of equal protection of the laws” and was therefore unconstitutional.

An ordained United Methodist minister who sued to block a MS law dealing with religious objections to same-sex marriage says the law doesn’t represent the beliefs of her or many others.

There have been multiple legal challenges with a wide array of plaintiffs: gay and straight, transgender and not. It is reasonable to protect the convictions outlined in the law, they continued, “even though plaintiffs disagree with those beliefs and find them ‘offensive'”.

However, the federal judge believes that the new law is against the “equal dignity” of all citizens.

Polling has repeatedly shown that a larger share of Mississippians identify as “very religious” than in any other state.

Supporters of the MS law, however, saw Reeves’ ruling reflected in a warning given Tuesday by U.S. Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito, who decried his court’s failure to review a state of Washington law that required pharmacists to dispense emergency contraceptives despite religious beliefs that the drugs take a life by targeting a fertilized egg.

Christian churches including Southern Baptists and Catholics support the law.

Pentecostals were among the top supporters of the measure, and Matis pointed to the city of Jackson’s adoption of a nondiscrimination ordinance last month as one example of why he thinks the law is needed.

Mississippi Gov. Phil Bryant says he’s disappointed by a federal judge’s ruling that blocks a law that would let merchants and government employees cite religious beliefs to deny or delay services to same-sex couples. “I look forward to an aggressive appeal”, Bryant said in a statement.

Earlier this week, U.S. District Judge Carlton Reeves struck down part of HB 1523 and ruled that ms could not deny marriage licenses to same-sex couples, but the remainder of the law would let businesses cite religious objections to decline serving certain patrons, an act many view as discrimination.

“The State has put its thumb on the scale to favor some religious beliefs over others”.