Same-Sex Marriage

Mississippi is among a minority of states that still have unrepealed sodomy laws and is among more than half the states that still have a legal ban on same-sex marriage. Same-sex couples in Mississippi, however, can marry and receive the same legal rights as any married couple because of federal law.

After Massachusetts became the first state to legalize same-sex marriage in 2004, Mississippi joined most other states in banning same-sex marriage. A vote to amend the Mississippi constitution, which defined marriage as exclusively between a man and woman and denied recognition to same-sex marriages licensed outside the state, was supported by 86% of voters.

In 2013, the US Supreme Court struck down Section 3 of the Defense of Marriage Act, which had barred the federal government from recognizing same-sex marriages and had upheld California’s ban on same-sex marriage. In a 5–4 decision, the Court ruled that Section 3 violated the Fifth Amendment’s guarantee of equal protection by discriminating against same-sex couples whose marriages were recognized by their states. As a result, the federal government could no longer deny recognition or benefits to those marriages. The action triggered a wave of federal and state court rulings striking down similar bans across the country. The movement culminated in the court’s 2015 landmark decision in Obergefell v. Hodges, which legalized same-sex marriage nationwide. The ruling invalidated Mississippi’s ban and required the state to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples.

Mississippi continued to resist, though, passing House Bill 1523, the “Protecting Freedom of Conscience from Government Discrimination Act,” in 2016, allowing state officials to refuse to issue marriage licenses and service providers to refuse services if they have certain religious beliefs. These protected religious beliefs included the following: Marriage is only valid for heterosexual couples; sexual relations should only occur within the heterosexual marriage; gender is defined as “an individual’s immutable biological sex as objectively determined by anatomy and genetics at the time of birth.”

Following its passage, US District Judge Carlton Reeves ruled in Barber v. Bryant that House Bill 1523 was unconstitutional and blocked the law from taking effect. Nevertheless, in 2017, without commenting on its constitutionality, the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that the plaintiffs did not have standing to be able to challenge the law. In 2018, the Supreme Court refused to hear an appeal by the plaintiffs, meaning that House Bill 1523 remains in effect today.

Although Mississippi continues to define marriage as exclusively between a man and a woman in state law, the state issues marriage licenses to same-sex couples. As with the rest of the United States, there continues to be resistance to same-sex marriage, although there has been increased acceptance. In 2025, the US Supreme Court refused a request to revisit its Obergefell v. Hodges ruling, although Justice Clarence Thomas and major religious organizations such as the Mississippi Baptist Convention had called for it to be reversed. As of 2024, according to the Public Religion Research Institute, support for same-sex marriage in Mississippi had risen to 54%. Today, the Williams Institute at UCLA estimates that 57% of the almost six thousand same-sex couples in Mississippi are married.