A federal judge has blocked a Mississippi law intended to allow people who object on religious grounds to same-sex marriage and believe gender is determined at birth to refuse wedding and other services to lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people.
US District Judge Carlton Reeves found late on Thursday that the wide-ranging law adopted this spring unconstitutionally allowed "arbitrary discrimination" against the LGBT community, unmarried people and others who do not share such views.
"The state has put its thumb on the scale to favour some religious beliefs over others," wrote Reeves, who issued an injunction halting the law that was to take effect on Friday.
Mississippi is among a handful of southern US states on the front lines of legal battles over equality, privacy and religious freedom after the US Supreme Court last year legalised same-sex marriage.
The state's "Protecting Freedom of Conscience from Government Discrimination Act" sought to shield those believing that marriage involves a man and a woman, and sexual relations should occur within such marriages.
It also protected the belief that gender is defined by sex at birth.
By citing those three religious grounds, the law would have allowed people to refuse to provide a wide range of services from baking a wedding cake for a same-sex couple to counselling and fertility services.
It also permitted dress code and bathroom restrictions to be imposed on transgender people.
Reeves said the law violated the guarantee of religious neutrality and the promise of equal protection under the law by granting special rights to citizens holding certain religious beliefs.
Mississippi Governor Phil Bryant, a Republican, signed the measure into law in April. The state has defended it as a reasonable accommodation intended to protect businesses and individuals seeking to exercise their religious views.
"I look forward to an aggressive appeal," the governor said on Friday.
