JACKSON, Miss. — One judge will hear all three challenges to a Mississippi law that will let clerks cite religious beliefs to recuse themselves from issuing marriage licenses to same-sex couples.
Each lawsuit originally had been assigned to a different federal judge. Two have been shifted to U.S. District Judge Carlton Reeves, who already had one.
In reassigning cases Friday, Chief District Judge Louis Guirola Jr. cited an overall equal distribution of the workload among judges.
Reeves overturned Mississippi’s ban on same-sex marriage in 2014 but put his ruling on hold while the state appealed. The U.S. Supreme Court issued a ruling in an Ohio case last summer that effectively legalized same-sex marriage nationwide.
Mississippi’s House Bill 1523, set to become law July 1, was one of several measures filed by state lawmakers around the nation in response to the Supreme Court decision.
Supporters say the Mississippi law will protect people’s religious belief that marriage should only be between a man and a woman, while opponents say it violates the equal-protection guarantee of the Constitution. All three lawsuits seek to have the bill declared unconstitutional and to block it from becoming law.