(Reuters) – A federal judge has blocked a Mississippi law intended to allow people who object on religious grounds to refuse wedding and other services to lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people.
U.S. District Judge Carlton Reeves, in a ruling late on Thursday, said that the wide-ranging law adopted this spring unconstitutionally allowed “arbitrary discrimination” against the LGBT community, unmarried people and others who do not share such views.
“The state has put its thumb on the scale to favor some religious beliefs over others,” wrote Reeves, who issued a preliminary injunction halting the law that was to take effect on Friday.
Mississippi is among a handful of southern U.S. states on the front lines of legal battles over equality, privacy and religious freedom after the U.S. Supreme Court last year legalized same-sex marriage in all 50 states.
Mississippi’s “Protecting Freedom of Conscience from Government Discrimination Act” sought to shield those who believe that marriage involves a man and a woman and that sexual relations should occur within such marriages. The law also protected the belief that gender is defined by sex at birth.
