Federal Judge Blocks Mississippi Law Immunizing Discrimination Against Members of the LGBT Community

Free Exercise of Religion Not a License to Discriminate

Last Thursday, a Mississippi federal judge enjoined the Mississippi "Protecting Freedom of Conscience from Government Discrimination Act," also known as House Bill 1523, declaring that it violated both the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment as well as the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment.

The Act was a thinly veiled attempt to authorize discrimination against members of the LGBT community, most prominently by allowing individuals to withhold goods and services, and immunize such discrimination, if the reason was based on the following beliefs or convictions:

          (a)  Marriage is or should be recognized as the union of one man and one woman;

          (b)  Sexual relations are properly reserved to such a marriage; and

          (c)  Male (man) or female (woman) refer to an individual's immutable biological sex as objectively determined by anatomy and genetics at time of birth.

This Act was passed in response to the Supreme Court’s 2015 decision that held states cannot bar same sex marriage and other societal developments that some in Mississippi found to their dislike.