Federal judge halts Mississippi’s anti-LGBT law

The law is on hold while it the judge’s ruling is being appealed.

Mississippi Gov. Phil Bryant had asked U.S. District Court Judge Carlton Reeves to issue a stay of his preliminary injunction order during the appeal. If granted, the state would have allowed the state to enforce the law during its appeal of the ruling against the law.

Bryant signed the bill, HB 1523, into law on April 5. The bill provided protections for individuals, religious organizations, and certain businesses who take actions due to their “sincerely held religious beliefs or moral convictions” to same-sex marriage — or any sex outside straight marriage. It also provided similar protections for those who object to transgender people.

In dismissing the state’s argument for why a stay should be granted — and reiterating that he believed the plaintiffs would ultimately succeed in their challenge to the law — Reeves was abrupt.

“[I]ssuing 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,” he wrote — referencing the U.S. Supreme Court’s earlier gay rights cases.

By: Alan

Alan Colmes is the publisher of Liberaland.