Noah Feldman, Columnist

Don't Let Mississippi Establish Anti-Gay Religion

One state wants to protect a single set of beliefs. That's unconstitutional.

June 16, 2016 at 4:43 PM UTC

Noah Feldman is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist. A professor of law at Harvard University, he is author, most recently, of “To Be a Jew Today: A New Guide to God, Israel, and the Jewish People."

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The first wave of state legislative reactions to the Supreme Court’s 2015 decision legalizing gay marriage typically involved state versions of the federal Religious Freedom Restoration Act. The motive might have been anti-gay, but the form was hard to criticize legally, since other states and federal law already provided the same religious-liberty protection.

Not so for Mississippi’s new law, which gives opponents of gay marriage special protection. Now facing its first challenge in federal court, it should be held unconstitutional because it violates the establishment clause of the First Amendment1466091504237 by singling out one set of religious beliefs for positive treatment.