JACKSON, Miss. (AP) — Another group is challenging a Mississippi law that will let workers cite their own religious objections to same-sex marriage to deny services to people.
Campaign for Southern Equality and two lesbian couples filed papers May 10 seeking to reopen their 2014 federal lawsuit that challenged Mississippi’s definition of marriage as only between a man and a woman.
Their filing came a day after a gay couple and the American Civil Liberties Union filed a lawsuit challenging the new religious-objections bill set to become law July 1.
Roberta Kaplan of New York, lead attorney in the Campaign for Southern Equality case, is asking a judge to order Mississippi clerks to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples without delay.
She also seeks to compel the state to release names of clerks who recuse themselves from issuing such licenses, and she wrote in the court filing that clerks who refuse marriage licenses to same-sex couples should refuse them to straight couples, too.
Mississippi House Bill 1523 was one of several measures filed by state lawmakers across the country this year in reaction to last summer’s U.S. Supreme Court ruling that effectively legalized same-sex marriage. Republican Gov. Phil Bryant signed the Mississippi bill in April, saying it protects people’s First Amendment right of free expression of religion.
The bill says government clerks could recuse themselves from issuing marriage licenses to gay or lesbian couples, and judges could recuse themselves from performing same-sex weddings. Although it says such officials must find someone else to issue the license or perform the wedding, legislators did not say what happens when every employee in a clerk’s office or every judge in a county chooses not to provide the services for same-sex couples.
Kaplan wrote in the filing Tuesday that the bill “is absolutely silent as to how the right of all Mississippians who seek to legally marry, including gay men and lesbians, will be protected under this new ‘recusal’ system.”
Officials who recuse themselves from issuing licenses or performing marriages for same-sex couples must file a form with the state registrar of vital statistics. Kaplan said the Office of Vital Records sent her a letter May 4 saying it “is under no obligation” to disclose information about officials who file recusal forms.
