'License to Discriminate' Bill Advances in Mississippi

A committee moves the bill to consideration by the full House, and opponents say an amended version still provides ample opportunity for discrimination.

Trudy Ring

Trudy Ring is The Advocate’s senior politics editor and copy chief. She has been a reporter and editor for daily newspapers and LGBTQ+ weeklies/monthlies, trade magazines, and reference books. She is a political junkie who thinks even the wonkiest details are fascinating, and she always loves to see political candidates who are groundbreaking in some way. She enjoys writing about other topics as well, including religion (she’s interested in what people believe and why), literature, theater, and film. Trudy is a proud “old movie weirdo” and loves the Hollywood films of the 1930s and ’40s above all others. Other interests include classic rock music (Bruce Springsteen rules!) and history. Oh, and she was a Jeopardy! contestant back in 1998 and won two games. Not up there with Amy Schneider, but Trudy still takes pride in this achievement.

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Trudy Ring

March 04 2014 9:31 PM EST

November 17 2015 5:28 AM EST

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A Mississippi House subcommittee today advanced a so-called religious freedom bill, which opponents say is actually gives business owners license to discriminate against LGBT people and members of religions other than their own.

The House Judiciary B Committee approved the Mississippi Religious Freedom Restoration Act, sending it to the full House for consideration, the Associated Press reports. The State Senate has already passed a different version of the bill.

A House subcommittee earlier changed the language in the bill in an attempt to make it more palatable to civil rights activists and less like the legislation vetoed last week in Arizona, but LGBT and liberal groups say the bill is still deeply flawed.

"While that new language would preserve the rights of businesses to enact non-discrimination policies, it would not prevent them from also enacting discriminatory policies where a 'sincerely held religious belief' was present," reports the online publication Deep South Progressive.

Several Mississippi State University students demonstrated against the bill today at the state capitol. "It opens that door wide enough that anyone with a genuinely held religious belief is permitted to discriminate on any grounds without worry that the state might intervene," one of them, L.B. Wilson, told the AP.