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GET THE DAY’S LATEST NEWS: Click here to sign up for our Afternoon Updates email Those who speak out against gay or transgender people also would have been protected from lawsuits and other reprisals. The law, passed in March, would have allowed businesses to refuse to serve gay people and let government employees decline to issue same-sex marriage licenses as long as somebody else in the office was available to perform the task. Known as House Bill 1523, the Mississippi law sought to protect three religious beliefs - that only opposite-sex couples can marry, that sex is reserved for married heterosexual couples, and that gender is determined by physical characteristics at birth, a provision aimed at transgender people. Overturning the law, Paxton told the appeals court, would threaten “the ability of states to enact legislation to protect their citizens’ rights” to freely exercise their religion.
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Precedents set by the 5th Circuit apply to Texas, Louisiana and Mississippi. “Americans have the right to peacefully live and work according to their deeply held beliefs, in accordance with the religious freedoms enshrined in our Constitution,” Paxton said.Īlthough civil rights and gay rights advocates say the Mississippi law allowed for government-sanctioned discrimination, socially conservative Republicans in Texas have vowed to pass similar laws when the Legislature convenes in January - a strategy that would be endangered if the appeals court ruled that the Mississippi law was unconstitutional. Circuit Court of Appeals in a legal brief, was intended to protect citizens from being forced by the government into taking actions that violate their religious beliefs, particularly if they oppose same-sex marriage. The Mississippi law, Paxton told the 5th U.S. Joined Thursday by Republican officials from eight other states, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton urged a federal appeals court to reinstate a Mississippi law that had been struck down as discriminatory against gay and transgender people.