Hooray for Mississippi!
Mississippi’s making progress thanks to U.S. District Judge Carlton Reeves who blocked anti-LGBT law HB 1523 from taking effect. The law would have made it legal to discriminate against the LGBT community, as well as other organizations and companies founded on “sincerely held” religious beliefs. Earlier last week, the judge already nixed the bathroom section of the bill which would have forced transgendered people to use the bathroom associated with their birth gender instead of their gender identity. Judge Reeves wrote that HB 1523 ‘violates both the guarantee of religious neutrality and the promise of equal protection of the laws’ and that ‘the deprivation of equal protection of the laws is HB 1523’s very essence.’ ‘Under the guise of providing additional protection for religious exercise, it creates a vehicle for state-sanctioned discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity,’ Reeves also wrote. ‘It is not rationally related to a legitimate end.’
What can we say? We heart Judge Reeves. We heart Mississippi.
View more of the story here.