Same-Sex Couples Challenge Recusal Provision Of Mississippi’s Anti-LGBT Law
For the Campaign for Southern Equality and the two same-sex couples who had sued to end the marriage ban in the first place, the new law — HB 1523 — was “a slap in the face,” as Joce Pritchett, one of the plaintiffs told BuzzFeed News.
“We’d barely had time to relax in the safety of being a legal family when our own legislature sucker-punched us,” Pritchett wrote. “These are the people we elected to protect us. To say that county clerks can choose not to issue us licenses but continue to issue licenses to straight couples in line behind us is incredibly unfair.”
And so, on Tuesday, lawyers for the couples and the organization asked the judge in their marriage case to reopen that case to expand the permanent injunction he issued last year against Mississippi’s marriage ban.
The lawyers explain in the filing that they are pursuing this unusual path to challenging HB 1523 because the new law “once again seeks to limit the access of gay and lesbian Mississippians to the institution of marriage ‘on the same terms and conditions as opposite-sex couples.’”
BuzzFeedNews
5/10/16
Magnolia Tribune
