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ITEM: You know that Mississippi law passed in April that basically said you can legally discriminate against LBGTs and even unmarried hetero couples as long as it contravenes yr religious beliefs (provided those religious beliefs are Christian?
A federal judge just ruled it unconstitutional. Twice.
Earlier this week, U.S. District Court Judge Carlton Reeves ruled on a specific provision of the law that allowed clerks to recuse themselves from issuing marriage licenses to same-sex couples. He struck that one down.
Then, minutes before the law was to go into effect on July 1, Reeves struck down the rest of it for violating the First and Fourteenth Amendments.
I’m not surprised by the ruling. You can’t really call it a “religious freedom” bill if it takes just three specific religious beliefs from one specific religion (well, two if you include Islam, which no one who wrote and supported the bill had in mind, I can pretty much guarantee) and encode them into law – especially in a way that violates another amendment (in this case, the 14th one). The 1A has never guaranteed religious freedom to the point that yr religious beliefs legally supersede everyone else’s rights or beliefs.
But then, as I’ve said before, part of the purpose of bills like this – and many of them have been proposed to varying degrees of severity – isn’t to succeed, but to be seen by yr constituents voting in favor of them. So the politicians who backed this law will get the political mileage they wanted with their base either way, and they get to trot out the old “liberal activist judge” meme for good measure.
Still, it’s nice the law was rejected, though of course it might be reinstated on appeal. No word yet on an appeal will actually happen, although Gov Phil Bryant has said he would very much desire it. And bear in mind that LGBTs are still not covered by the state's existing anti-discrimination law anyway. Still, in times like these you take what you can get.
Case dismissed,
This is dF
A federal judge just ruled it unconstitutional. Twice.
Earlier this week, U.S. District Court Judge Carlton Reeves ruled on a specific provision of the law that allowed clerks to recuse themselves from issuing marriage licenses to same-sex couples. He struck that one down.
Then, minutes before the law was to go into effect on July 1, Reeves struck down the rest of it for violating the First and Fourteenth Amendments.
I’m not surprised by the ruling. You can’t really call it a “religious freedom” bill if it takes just three specific religious beliefs from one specific religion (well, two if you include Islam, which no one who wrote and supported the bill had in mind, I can pretty much guarantee) and encode them into law – especially in a way that violates another amendment (in this case, the 14th one). The 1A has never guaranteed religious freedom to the point that yr religious beliefs legally supersede everyone else’s rights or beliefs.
But then, as I’ve said before, part of the purpose of bills like this – and many of them have been proposed to varying degrees of severity – isn’t to succeed, but to be seen by yr constituents voting in favor of them. So the politicians who backed this law will get the political mileage they wanted with their base either way, and they get to trot out the old “liberal activist judge” meme for good measure.
Still, it’s nice the law was rejected, though of course it might be reinstated on appeal. No word yet on an appeal will actually happen, although Gov Phil Bryant has said he would very much desire it. And bear in mind that LGBTs are still not covered by the state's existing anti-discrimination law anyway. Still, in times like these you take what you can get.
Case dismissed,
This is dF
