Two drive-by shootings in the final twenty-four hours of 2019 in Jackson. A one and thirteen year old shot in the first drive-by in broad daylight at 10 a.m., no less. Multiple other shootings that occurred throughout New Year’s Eve and New Year’s Day. Too many to even count or map rationally on a timeline.
Eighty-three murders in 2019. Eighty-four in 2018.
Something has to give. Law abiding citizens are beyond tired. They are exhausted. Utterly, completely, and totally exhausted. And it feels as if their exhaustion, their desperation, is completely unheard and unappreciated by the powers that be.
When the city addresses this ongoing crisis – if it even bothers to address it, and that is a big question for many – I suspect its comments will primarily focus on lack of economic opportunity. Lack of economic opportunity is one of many factors in the crime equation but, importantly, one over which a local government has very little control, and certainly very little control in the short-term (its importance can also be debated because there are numerous areas around the world with similar poverty rates and access to guns that do not have similar crime rates). It may also deflect towards the nature of domestic disturbances and disturbances among acquaintances and how, in those instances, it is impossible for law enforcement to foresee the dispute and prevent the crime (even though all of these murders and all of our other crimes are not of the domestic or acquaintance disturbance variety).
But I also predict the city will continue to entirely neglect to confront the factors over which the city and county have complete control: the declining numbers of law enforcement to patrol and - perhaps most importantly - the timely prosecution of cases. Patrol staffing levels appear to be at historic lows. Patrols matter. Police presence matters. The problem of timely prosecution is well-known and affects not only law enforcement efforts to control crime, but also, and very importantly, the civil rights of the accused who often sit in jail for unacceptably long periods of time before being brought to trial.
It seems that every lay person in the street knows of these issues and how we are entirely lacking in these areas, yet it is the elephant in the room that is not touched by the powers that be. Why is that?
We can wax philosophically all we want about larger economic issues and their impact on crime – and those can be very real. We can deflect to how law enforcement cannot time-transport itself into the middle of every domestic disturbance to prevent its occurrence, and that is true. But until we control what we can control (such as the numbers of police patrolling and timely prosecuting of cases), economic philosophical musings and deflections to the inability to prevent domestic and acquaintance disturbances ring hollow.
A tripartite approach of swiftness, certainty, and an appropriate degree of severity is a well-known framework for approaching criminal justice issues. Swiftness of prosecution and, if found guilty, punishment; certainty that if found guilty, punishment will follow; and an appropriate degree of severity to fit the crime. We could use more of this here. Currently we have none of it. It is not a panacea, but it is a start.
I am an adamant supporter of criminal justice reform. America’s criminal justice system collectively was indiscriminately and excessively punitive through at least the 1980s and 1990s, and we are now paying high societal and economic costs for decades of irresponsibility and callousness in how we approached criminal justice.
But there is a balance to everything. Our city and county have approached criminal justice from a place so far off the spectrum that it defies categorization. Suburbanites often term it “left” or “liberal,” but that is not accurate. It is not operating from a philosophical perspective; it’s just not functioning. We need to redirect the ship. We can start with the basics: enforcement, and the prosecution of cases.
We are about to have a new district attorney, and that brings great promise for positive change. His predecessor has left him an enormous job of clean-up. Law abiding citizens are literally begging for help.
This column appeared in the Clarion Ledger on January 7, 2020.
The recent rise in violence from Parchman and other prisons has become a leading issue of the day in Mississippi, and even received national attention. Right in time for the start of the 2020 legislative session.
Naturally, one of the first questions you will hear is who, or what, is responsible? Is it the governor; is it the Department of Corrections; is it the low pay of prison guards; or the prisoners themselves? Or, is it something else?
Mississippi has begun to address this question.
In 2014, Mississippi policymakers began to study the issue of criminal justice and explore policy options that would help decrease both crime and incarceration while providing better outcomes for people who encounter the criminal justice system. The passage of House Bill 585 began this process by establishing certainty in sentencing and prioritizing prison bed space for people facing serious offenses.
This helped reduce the state’s prison population by 10 percent and generated nearly $40 million in taxpayer savings. Policymakers have also passed several pieces of legislation since then aimed at removing barriers to re-entry for those leaving the prison system.
But this isn’t the end of the story. When adjusted for population, Mississippi still incarcerates nearly 50 percent more people than the average of other states and over 10 times as many people as other founding NATO countries like the United Kingdom, Canada, France, and Italy.
From a budgetary perspective, maintaining the state’s prison system accounts for a large portion of Mississippi’s budget — one of the largest discretionary spending items. In 2019, the state sent over $340 million to the Mississippi Department of Corrections. This does not even account for the additional state, local, and county tax dollars spent on police and jails.
Maintaining one of the world’s largest prison systems for a population our size consumes a large portion of the state’s budget. This should lead conservatives to ask, “Are we getting what we pay for?”
It doesn't appear to look that way.
According to the most recent numbers published by the Mississippi Department of Corrections in 2015, over a third of the people released from state prison end up re-incarcerated within three years. This does not even account for people who might be re-arrested. The U.S. Department of Justice estimates that another third of those released will end up being arrested again within three years.
It also appears that our notoriously high incarceration rate has not provided a commensurate decrease in crime. While crime rates in Mississippi are considerably lower than their peak two decades ago, Mississippians are still more likely to be the victim of property crimes than those in other areas of the country.
And the economic impact of the state’s reliance on incarceration is not limited to tax expenditures. Mississippi has the fourth lowest workforce participation rates in the country. This means fewer people are working or looking for work than in most other states. Research shows that one of the main drivers of this lower economic participation is previous involvement with the criminal justice system.
While the state has been lauded for the reforms to this point, the prison population remains stubbornly high, as Mississippi continues to incarcerate more people per capita than all but two other states. The latest numbers show that the state is falling further behind economically, as our workforce participation is growing at a slower pace than most other states. While other states are moving to reform their criminal justice systems to reduce reliance on prison, Mississippi cannot rest on its laurels.
The state can work to significantly reduce the incarcerated population by prioritizing alternatives like drug treatment for crimes driven by addiction, treating drug possession offenses at the local level as a misdemeanor, eliminating the state’s mandatory minimum habitual sentencing structure that imposes long prison sentences on petty offenses, and ending the practice of automatically sending people back to prison for minor violations while on probation or parole.
The state can also fund alternatives to incarceration like intervention courts, community diversions, and community drug treatment that produce system-wide cost savings. We can also paint the full picture by providing the overall cost of each prison sentence to judges before they impose sentences, like in the federal system.
Parchman houses some of the most dangerous criminals in the state (and potentially the world) who have committed heinous crimes and they should not be on the streets. Most can agree with that. However, we have a much larger prison population than the examples we initially think of. And simply having a larger prison population that most hasn’t made us safer. Rather, as the latest news shows, we need to continue to reform our criminal justice system, and reprioritize and refocus its purpose. Simply giving a raise of a few thousand dollars to prison guards won’t do that.
Medicaid expansion, campus free speech, regulatory reform, teacher pay raises, and infrastructure spending are some of the issues that the Mississippi legislature will likely tackle in the session that starts today.
Since this session follows an election year, legislators will be in town until May 10, about a month longer than usual.
Last year’s session ended on March 29, nine days before legislators were supposed to leave town.
With a longer session, the deadlines will be pushed back. February 24 is the deadline for bills to be introduced and March 10 is the first deadline for bills to be passed out of committee in the originating chamber.
Medicaid expansion
One of the biggest issues facing the legislature is the possible expansion of Medicaid for able-bodied, working adults up to 138 percent of the poverty level under the Affordable Care Act, better known as Obamacare.
Thirty-six states have expanded Medicaid, which has the federal government cover 90 percent of the costs. The other 10 percent.
Any attempt to expand Medicaid will likely face the veto pen of incoming Gov. Tate Reeves, who made stopping expansion one of the primary issues of his campaign.
Incoming Lt. Gov. Delbert Hosemann is open to the idea, but House Speaker Philip Gunn is less supportive.
If Louisiana is any indication, participation and thus costs will far exceed estimates. According to a report by the Louisiana-based Pelican Institute, the state expected 306,000 new enrollees when it expanded Medicaid eligibility, but that number has ballooned to 456,361 according to recent data from the Louisiana Department of Health. That’s an increase of 49.1 percent.
A study by Institutes for Higher Education in 2015 said that it’d cost taxpayers $159.1 million per year by 2025 if 95 percent of the eligible population participated in the expansion (310,039 enrollees).
Campus free speech
As evidenced by events over the past year, work remains on ensuring that the state’s universities and community colleges don’t restrict the free speech rights of students and faculty.
The Foundation for Individual Rights in Education filed a lawsuit in U.S. District Court in September on behalf of a former Jones County Junior College student who was stopped several times by campus police and administrators from exercising his free speech rights. Attorneys for the college are seeking dismissal of the case in a filing on December 5.
One of the ways that the legislature could protect the free speech rights of students is enacting legislation that would prevent the creation of restrictive speech codes, keep administrators from disinviting speakers (especially controversial ones), create a series of disciplinary sanctions for students and anyone else who infringes the free speech rights of others, and allow people whose First Amendment rights were curtailed on campus to be compensated for court costs and attorney fees.
Regulatory reform
A study by the Mercatus Center at George Mason University found that the state’s administrative code has 9.3 million words and 117,558 restrictions. To read all of it would take 13 weeks of 40-hour work weeks and some breaks.
This regulatory morass places a heavy burden on businesses to stay in compliance and could be reduced with some common-sense reforms.
One of those would be a law that’d require the state’s regulatory bodies to strike two regulations for every new one that the board or commission seeks to enact.
At the federal level, President Donald Trump’s administration has enacted similar policies starting in 2017 that eliminated $13.5 billion in regulatory costs in fiscal 2019. In fiscal 2020, this could generate savings of $51.6 billion according to government estimates.
Gasoline tax hike
There is also a push for a gasoline tax hike for Mississippi drivers. Right now, they pay 37.19 cents in state and federal taxes on every gallon of gasoline, about 11 cents a gallon less than the national average. The state’s gas tax was last increased in 1987.
The Mississippi Department of Transportation requested $1.1 billion for fiscal 2021. Of that budget request, $559 million is from federal funds, $305 million from the state’s gasoline tax, $161 million from other state taxes and $75 million from state truck and bus taxes and fees.
The Office of State Aid Roads has requested $195,463,799 in from special and federal funds, which helps maintain 25,857.04 miles of county roads that are considered “feeder” routes between the state highways. This money also goes to maintaining 5,368 bridges on these routes
Also possible is a local option gasoline tax that is similar to Florida’s that would allow counties and municipalities to hold referendums on increasing local excise taxes on gasoline by a few cents. This would require a constitutional amendment and is probably unlikely.
Seemingly forgotten is the Mississippi Infrastructure Modernization Act of 2018 that was passed in a special session. The law diverts 35 percent of the state’s use tax revenues by next year to cities and counties to help with infrastructure. It also authorized $300 million in borrowing, with $250 million for the Mississippi Department of Transportation and $50 million for local infrastructure not administered by MDOT.
The infrastructure bill also increased registration fees for owners of hybrid and electric vehicles and is redirecting gaming tax revenue from sports wagering to roads and bridges.
The legislature also created a lottery, the first $80 million in tax revenue annually going to the state highway fund until 2028 and the rest put into the Education Enhancement Fund.
In the first week of sales, the lottery earned of $8,932,200, with $1.9 million going to roads and bridges statewide.
Teacher pay raise
One of the first things that legislators will have to tackle is a deficit appropriation of $18.5 million to cover the $1,500 pay increase for the state’s teachers passed in last year’s session.
Due to problems with an antiquated computer system, the Mississippi Department of Education reported a smaller number of eligible teaching positions than actually existed.
The $1,500 pay hike likely won’t be the only raise teachers receive from the legislature. During the campaign, both Reeves and Hosemann supported increasing teacher pay to the “southeastern average.”
With $100 million in additional revenue available to appropriators, Mississippi teachers could see more in their wallets. Teachers have enjoyed three pay hikes since 2000, beyond their annual step increases.
Mississippi teachers are the lowest paid nationally (average of $44,926 before the increase took effect in July), but when the state’s low cost of living is factored in, their pay ranks 35th, according to analysis of data by North Carolina’s John Locke Foundation.
Using the new raise as a guide, every $1,500 in raises will add up to about $76.9 million annually. An 11.29 percent increase that would bring the average Mississippi teacher’s salary to about $50,000 would cost about $263 million annually.
The 2020 Mississippi legislative session gavels in Tuesday at noon to begin the 125-day session that follows an election year. But most anticipate the session won’t last the full length, which would put Sine Die on May 10.
After the elections, Speaker Philip Gunn (R-Clinton) was chosen by the Republican caucus to continue serving as speaker. He will begin his third session in that role this year. Rep. Jason White (R-West), a top lieutenant of Gunn’s who served as chairman of Rules last term, has been tapped by the caucus to serve as speaker pro tempore, the number two position in the House.
Though a formality, they will need to be voted on by the full body.
White replaces Rep. Greg Snowden (R-Meridian), the previous pro temp, who lost in the Republican primary last summer.
The Senate will see more changes, starting at the top. Sec. of State Delbert Hosemann was elected lieutenant governor in the fall and he will soon occupy the office Gov.-elect Tate Reeves held for the previous eight years.
And Sen. Dean Kirby (R-Pearl), who has been in the senate for nearly three decades, has been tapped to serve as the president pro tempore of the Senate. Kirby is replacing Sen. Gray Tollison (R-Oxford), who decided not to run for re-election.
Because of the extended session, the legislative calendar is pretty empty for the first two months. The deadline for introducing general bills is not until February 24, with a March 10 deadline for committees to report on bills. But dates can be moved up.
There will be some new faces in Jackson, but Republicans will continue to enjoy large majorities in each chamber, with one race too be determined. Rep. Ashley Henley (R-Southaven) has filed an elections challenge in House District 40. She was defeated by Democrat Hester Jackson McCray by 13 votes, as of the last count. It will now be up to the House to determine the fate of that seat.
Along with the election challenge in the House, the next big move will be the appointments of committees by Gunn and Hosemann.
In this episode of Unlicensed, MCPP's Jon Pritchett sat down with National Review Institute scholar Andy McCarthy to talk about his book Ball of Collusion, impeachment, the Deep State, and more.
Mississippi suffered its fourth population decline over the past five years in 2019.
According to new estimates from the U.S. Census Bureau, the state’s population declined by 4,871, the sixth highest total in the country. Mississippi and neighboring Louisiana, which saw a decrease of 10,896 residents, are the only states in the south to lose population over the past year. This is a continuing trend.
But what’s happening in Mississippi is an outlier in the South, save for the Pelican State.
A look at the map of domestic migration, which measures where Americans are moving over the past year, shows a picture of the haves and the have-nots when it comes to population growth.
Large swaths of the Northeast and Midwest show a declining population, while the interior west, west coast (save for California), and the Southeast saw population gains. Substantial gains in some states.
Domestic migration growth rate in 2019
Mississippi had a negative domestic migration rate of 3.6, meaning for every 100 residents that moved to Mississippi last year, 103.6 left, according to analysis of Census numbers from the Illinois Policy Institute. Louisiana had a negative rate of 5.5. Every other southern state, south of Virginia, had positive numbers. Some smaller like 0.8 in Arkansas, some larger like 10.3 in South Carolina.
So people aren’t leaving the South, or running for liberal policy (see California, Illinois, and New York), they are just leaving Mississippi.
Mississippi over the past decade
While Mississippi’s population grew by about 20,000 during the first four years of this decade, there has been a sharp reversal dating back to 2015, save for a small positive uptick in 2017. The declines have been particularly noticeable over the past two years, losing more than 3,000 residents in 2018 and nearly 5,000 last year.
Mississippi’s population growth over the past decade was only 45th best. Even Louisiana, who has been on the negative side of things recently, had growth of about 2.5 percent last decade (compared to being slightly above zero in Mississippi).
Tennessee had the 17th highest growth in the country, while Alabama and Arkansas were middle of the pack.
Reversing the trend
We can look at Mississippi and say things like, “we don’t have any cool large cities today that people want to move to.” But honestly, were Salt Lake City or Raleigh or Nashville that cool 30 years ago? They certainly looked and performed much differently than they do today.
People moved to those places because of opportunity. And there are policies the state can adopt that would put Mississippi ahead of the curve when it comes to national policy and positioning the state to be competitive nationwide.
For starters, Mississippi needs to move away from a desire to overregulate commerce and embolden government bureaucrats. Mississippi has more than 117,000 regulations that cut across every sector of the economy. A successful model to stem this growing tide would be a one-in, two-out policy where for every new regulation that is adopted, two have to be removed. If a regulatory policy is so important, let’s make the government prove it.
The Trump administration adopted a similar executive order in 2017, and the numbers show we are actually seeing decreases greater than two-to-one, and these are not insignificant regulatory reductions.
This could be particularly beneficial in healthcare and tech policy. No department regulates more than the Department of Health, but our goal should be a push toward free market healthcare reforms that encourage choice and competition. In tech policy, the state has the opportunity to be one of the first states to essentially open the door for innovation, rather than one where entrepreneurs need to seek permission from the state. If Mississippi wants to get in the technology world, and we are convinced this is essential, a permissionless innovation policy in healthcare would be a big step in the right direction. In his recent article in the Mississippi Business Journal, Auditor Shad White pointed out the opportunity to focus on creating high margin businesses and jobs with a focus on healthcare tech innovation.
We should also not require people to receive permission from the state to work when they do move here. Open the door to productive citizens by allowing for universal recognition of licensing, following the path paved by Arizona. If you have been licensed in one state, that license should be good in Mississippi. Again, we could be ahead of the curve.
At the same time, our occupational licensing regime should be reviewed. Today, 19 percent of Mississippians need a license to work. It was 5 percent in the 1950s. While there are some occupations where a license is obviously prudent, we’ve expanded into far too many occupations.
This serves to lower competition and increase costs for consumers, while not providing those consumers with a better product. Occupational licensing is an example of how Mississippi misses the opportunity to grow her economy by acting in defensive ways to protect the slices of our economic pie for the well-connected when the reality is we could create a much bigger economic pie if we encouraged more creative disruption, competition, and risk-taking.
If Mississippi is to grow its economy, it will require not only keeping our best and brightest but also attracting others to come to the Magnolia State. Places like Tennessee, Georgia, and the Carolinas did not lose their Southern identities by encouraging newcomers. The economic engines in those states grow because of the quality of the entrepreneurs, capitalists, scientists, and productive people. Not that long ago, Charlotte and Meridian were exactly the same size. Economies are dynamic and once they get momentum, amazing things can happen. There is also the probability that a growing economy will have a “boomerang effect” – bringing back people born and educated here who left to pursue greater opportunities.
There’s no rule that Mississippi has to lose population. Alabama, with whom we share much in common, had a domestic migration growth of 1.9 last year. States like Tennessee, Georgia, and Florida may have done better, but we are not automatically immune to the success of our neighbors.
Finally, Mississippi needs to shed its abundant reliance on government and the public sector. Whether for public assistance, grants, contracts, jobs, or specific tax breaks, the citizens and companies in Mississippi are too dependent on state government. And the state is too dependent on the federal government. We have the third highest level of economic dependence on federal grants-in-aid in the nation (43%) and the fourth highest level of our economy driven by the public sector in the country (55%). Politicians, state agency directors, and government bureaucrats cannot create the economic growth we need. They can, however, work together with our various representatives and create an environment that allows and encourages private economic activities. Ultimately, with such an environment, it will be the entrepreneurs, business owners, productive workers, creative disruptors, capitalists, managers, and consumers who deliver the economic growth we all seek.
As the state auditor appropriately ended his article in the Mississippi Business Journal, the time to act is now.
The Mobile City Council delayed a decision on whether to provide $3 million in taxpayer funds to restart passenger service between the city and New Orleans.
According to a story on Al.com, council members were set to vote on the possible outlay on December 31, but learned that the deadline for local matching funds for a federal railroad grant was extended from January 6 to February 5.
The council will wait until its January 26 meeting before deciding to commit to providing the taxpayer money, which would be provided over the first three years the twice-daily Amtrak trains would be in operation.
The Federal Railroad Administration not only extended the deadline for local matches for its Restoration and Enhancement Grant program, but increased the amount of available funds by an additional $1.9 million to $26.3 million.
Alabama leaders, most notably Gov. Kay Ivey, have balked about providing funds to restore the service that was ended in 2005 before Hurricane Katrina made landfall on the Gulf Coast.
Mississippi has already promised $15 million and Louisiana will provide $10 million to match more than $33 million in federal grants to upgrade the trackage and other infrastructure.
The three states would have to outlay more than $3.3 million apiece over the first three years of operation to keep the service running.
In addition to the possible money from Mobile for operations, either the state of Alabama or another government in the state would need to provide $2.2 million for capital improvements to the CSX-owned trackage between Mobile and the Mississippi state line.
The Southern Rail Commission is an Interstate Rail Compact created in 1982 by Congress and consists of commissioners appointed by governors from Alabama, Louisiana, and Mississippi. The group is lobbying Alabama leaders to provide taxpayer funds for the project, including $2.5 million for a branch line to connect the CSX tracks to a possible new train station planned for Mobile’s downtown airport at the Brookley Aeroplex.
A plan to shift all air travel from the Mobile Regional Airport west of the city to Brookley is already in progress and city leaders are game to making it a multimodal travel hub. One airline, Frontier, is already offering service from a temporary terminal at the airport just minutes from Interstate 10 and downtown.
A 2015 Amtrak study says that a twice-daily train between Mobile and New Orleans would draw 38,400 riders annually. Similar routes have existed from 1984 to 1985 and 1996 to 1997, but both were put on a permanent siding as the three states declined to provide more taxpayer funds.
A similar passenger train, the Hoosier Line, received $3 million annually from Indiana taxpayers to provide four days per week service between Indianapolis and Chicago. Indiana Gov. Eric Holcomb sliced the money from his proposed two-year budget that was approved in April after ridership fell 18 percent from 33,930 rides in fiscal 2014 to 28,876 in fiscal 2018.
The Federal Rail Administration — under the Consolidated Rail Infrastructure and Safety Improvements Program (CRISI) — is providing up to $32,995,516 in taxpayer funds for improving crossings, bridges, sidings and other infrastructure along the route. Some of this money could also be used by Mobile for a new train station.
These funds would also pay for preliminary engineering and federal environmental reviews needed for another project of the SRC, passenger service between Baton Rouge and New Orleans.
The federal grants that would be provided to enact Amtrak service are meant to get the service operating. The first year, the grants would provide 80 percent of the operating costs, declining to 60 percent in the second year and dwindle to 40 percent in the third.
Scores on the ACT test for both Mississippi high school juniors and seniors decreased from last year, according to data released by the Mississippi Department of Education.
The average composite scores for Mississippi juniors who took the test declined from 17.8 in 2018 to 17.6 in 2019, while the percentage of juniors who met the minimum for all four benchmarks (English, mathematics, reading and science) remained at 9 percent.
Mississippi is one of 15 states that administers the ACT to all of its high school graduates. Mississippi seniors scored an average of 18.1, down slightly from last year’s 18.3.
In 2018, 38 percent of juniors in Mississippi met the standard for English. In 2019, that number increased slightly to 39 percent. Also up was reading (up one point to 24 percent of juniors meeting the standard) and a three-point improvement in science (18 percent of juniors met the standard).
Only 15 percent of 2019 juniors met the standard for math, down from 18 percent in 2018.
Out of the 29,817 juniors that took the test in 2019 in Mississippi, only 2,683 met the standards in all four areas, which is a good indicator of the readiness to take on college-level work. Last year, it was 2,812 out of 31,254 juniors statewide.
Only Nevada (17.9 composite average) scored worse than Mississippi among the states that administer the test to 80 percent or more of its graduates.
Only 46 percent of Mississippi seniors met the standard for English (tied with Hawaii for third lowest), 29 percent met the benchmark for reading (second from the bottom), 20 percent met the math standard (worst among the 80 percent testing states) and 19 percent met the standard for science, tied for last with Nevada.
One interesting trend is how juniors in A-rated and F-rated districts compared. Of the 31 A-rated districts in Mississippi, 12 had their composite scores dip in 2019 from 2018. Ten of those were 0.5 points or more.
The Oxford School District had the biggest drop among the A-rated districts, sliding from 22 in 2018 to 20.9 in 2019.
The biggest increase was the Lafayette County School District, whose ACT score composites went up from 18.2 to 19.5.
Of the 19 F-rated districts, only seven had gains from 2018 to 2019. Two districts, had losses of a point or more. The Humphreys County School District had the biggest drop, sliding from a composite of 15 in 2018 to 13.9 in 2019.
A former student at Jones County Junior College is suing the school for infringing on his free speech rights. And the U.S. Department of Justice is coming to his defense.
Michael Brown, who is now a student at the University of Southern Mississippi, was stopped twice by campus police for trying to inform students about the political club he was involved with, Young Americans for Liberty, without prior authorization from the school’s administration, according to the complaint filed by the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education.
Brown was stopped by campus officials early last year about an inflatable beach ball, known as a “free speech ball,” upon which students could write messages of their choice and again in the spring for polling students about marijuana legalization.
An administrator told YAL that they weren’t permitted on campus since they hadn’t sought permission from the college.
According to Brown, he and another student held up a sign polling students on marijuana. Campus police took him and another student to their office after telling a friend, who wasn’t a student, to leave. Campus officers later escorted the friend off campus.
The DOJ has now issued what is known as a statement of interest.
The DOJ statement compared the school’s regulations regarding public speech from their handbook to the tyrannical state of Oceania in George Orwell’s “1984.” The statement also says the college has an obligation to comply with the First Amendment.
The current regulations require at least three days’ notice to administrators before “gathering for any purpose.” The student handbook also puts even more restrictions on college-connected student organizations, which must schedule their events through the vice president of student affairs. The school administration also reserves the right, according to the handbook, to not schedule a speaker or an activity.
The statement says that these restrictions operate as a prior restraint on student speech and contain no exception for individuals or small groups, and grant school officials unbridled discretion to determine about what students may speak.
The DOJ urges JCJC to revisit and revise its speech policies. In May, FIRE wrote a letter to Jones Count Junior College President Jesse Smith offering to help the community college bring its policies into compliance with the First Amendment. The school didn’t respond to the letter.
This, however, is not the first – or even the most recent – instance of college campuses in Mississippi restricting free speech.
This fall, the Overby Center for Southern Journalism and Politics at Ole Miss rescinded an invitation of Elisha Krauss, a conservative commentator, days before she was scheduled to appear. The event was hosted by Young America’s Foundation. The Center is housed in the same building as the School of Journalism and New Media but is a separate organization.
The Overby Center claimed they do not allow ideological speakers, yet with a 2019 lineup that included a former Democratic candidate for the U.S. Senate and partisan journalists from the New York Times and Washington Post (among others), the definition of “ideological” seems to fluctuate based on how much you may agree with certain speech.
Krauss is certainly someone who has a conservative background, but also someone who has spent considerable time in the larger world of journalism. Someone who would have been a good balance to many of the other speakers allowed to convey their thoughts and ideas at the Overby Center.
Fortunately, the story in Oxford ended on a positive note. The administration invited Krauss back. And she gave a well-received speech, naturally, regarding free speech on college campuses.
But whether it’s a junior college or the oldest public university in the state, we shouldn’t be having these fights in Mississippi. Free speech should be welcomed and encouraged on every college campus in the state, regardless of whether you like the speech or not. And it shouldn’t take a lawsuit or an administrator overriding one or two decision makers.
To date, 14 states, including every state that borders Mississippi, have passed legislation to protect campus free speech and ensure different voices can be heard. The Magnolia State has the opportunity to join this growing trend in 2020.