Tag Archives: Mississippi

U.S. News | Women

The Court ruled 5-3 in favor of blocking restrictions enacted through a 2013 Texas law on the standards necessary for clinics to be allowed to operate within the state, the most expansive decision on abortion rights since 1992’s Planned Parenthood v. Casey.
The majority opinion found that the restrictions—which included requiring admitting privileges of doctors in nearby hospitals and heightened operational standards for the clinics—were medically unnecessary and reduced women’s access to safe abortion procedures.
The justices also declined to hear cases involving abortion provision restrictions in Mississippi and Wisconsin, and Alabama announced it would no longer pursue restrictions on abortion doctors in the wake of the Court’s decision.

Read more:
“Supreme Court Strikes Down Texas Abortion Restrictions” (The New York Times)
“Supreme Court spurns abortion restrictions in two more states” (Reuters)
“How the Texas abortion ruling will affect access across the US” (The Guardian)

(Image Credit: Michael Reynolds/EPA, via The Guardian)

House Bill 1523 allows for businesses and government workers to set religiously based workplace policies and refuse service to LGBT and unmarried cohabitating individuals on religious grounds, including public accommodations, adoption, foster care, counseling, and marriage certificate registration.
Governor Phil Bryant claimed the law didn’t conflict with federal laws but merely provided protection for persons who for religious reasons wished to refuse service to LGBT customers and clients.
The bill declares the government cannot discriminate against such “persons,” which includes a “sole proprietorship, or closely held company, partnership, association, organization, firm, corporation, cooperative, trust, society or other closely held entity.”

(Image Credit: Rogelio V. Solis/AP, via BuzzFeed News)

Judge Daniel P. Jordan III found that the law interfered with gay and lesbian citizens’ equal protection under the law in the wake of the Supreme Court’s 2015 decision overturning same-sex marriage bans.
Judge Jordan argued that Mississippi’s Department of Human Services couldn’t interfere with the “rights and responsibilities intertwined with marriage.”
The ruling came as the Mississippi Senate passed an extensive religious freedom bill, sending one of the most expansive anti-LGBT bills introduced after the establishment of the nationwide right to marry to the governor’s desk.

(Image Credit: Dominic Lipinski/PA, via The Guardian)