Last April, Mississippi Gov. Phil Bryant signed HB 1523 into law. Starting July 1, this law would have allowed landlords to evict gay and trans renters, employers to fire workers for being LGBT, private businesses to refuse service to LGBT people, given doctors a right to refuse to treat them, and permitted clerks to refuse to marry them.

At the midnight hour, Reeves issued an injunction to stop the law from taking effect.

Although Bryant argued that its law promoted religious liberty, Reeves stated that HB 1523 actually “establishes an official preference for certain religious beliefs over others,” thus violating the Establishment Clause. Adherents to anti-LGBT religious beliefs receive a special right to discriminate over others.

For example, as Reeves points out, "HB 1523 favors Southern Baptist over Unitarian doctrine, Catholic over Episcopalian doctrine, and Orthodox Judaism over Reform Judaism doctrine, to list just a few examples."

Several case plaintiffs included religious leaders such Rims Barber (of Barber v. Bryant) and Carol Burnett, who are ordained Christian ministers; retired Millsaps chaplain and ordained minister Don Fortenberry; the Joshua Generation Metropolitan Community Church in Hattiesburg, its pastor Brandiilyne Magnum-Dear, and director of worship Susan Magnum.

“Persons who hold contrary religious beliefs are unprotected,” Reeves explains. Thus, “the State has put its thumb on the scale to favor some religious beliefs over others...at the expense of other citizens.”

Defenders of the bill claimed that it would protect religious organizations from punishment if they refused to solemnize a same-sex marriage, but "religious organizations already have that right under the Free Exercise Clause of the First Amendment."

By uniquely burdening a certain community, Reeves notes, HB 1523 also violates the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment. Under the Supreme Court’s decision in Romer v. Evans, laws motivated by “animus”, or hostility, toward minorities are unconstitutional.

If Mississippi legislatures hadn’t been so blunt about their animus towards a specific minority, they might have had more plausible deniability. But the speaker of the House stated that Obergefell was “in direct conflict with God’s design for marriage as set forth in the Bible” and announced, “I don’t care what the Supreme Court says.” Other representatives called HB 1523 “very specific to LGBT people” and “balancing legislation to Obergefell.”

Clearly, as Reeves noted, supporters unabashedly “indicate that the bill was the State’s attempt to put LGBT citizens back in their place after Obergefell.”

This was, after all, the legislature’s own words.

Gov. Bryant has already vowed to spend more of the poorest state’s taxpayer money to fight this ruling.

But the presence of religious leaders among the plaintiffs challenging HB 1523, combined with Reeves’ comprehensive opinion, demonstrated that neither America’s religious leaders nor its Constitution tolerate discrimination against minorities by favoring one religion over another.