Roberta Kaplan Roberta Kaplan, a New York based attorney representing Campaign for Southern Equality and a lesbian couple, gestures to another attorney during a lunch break at the federal courthouse in Jackson, Miss.,. Kaplan and others are challenging HB 1523 on the grounds that it violates the principle of separation of church and state contained in the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. The plaintiffs, which include Mississippi ministers, community leaders, civic activists and a Hattiesburg church, are asking the federal court to issue an injunction blocking the bill from taking effect July 1