Growing up in the Jackson “bubble,” I knew I wanted to try something new when it came time to attend college. I received a wonderful education at Jackson Academy, but my views were rarely challenged or debated. Attending the University of Alabama was a dream come true, and I looked forward to encountering diverse beliefs and thoughts at a top-tier school boasting more national merit finalists than any other public university. I vowed, though, that I would never lose my faith or convictions.
I vividly recall an honors college seminar taught by an outspokenly liberal professor who asked us to write about something controversial. We could cite any source but one — the Bible. We could cite the Quran, Mao’s Little Red Book or Dr. Seuss. Just not the Bible. In this professor’s opinion, the Bible was not even history; it was just fairy tales. I questioned such intolerance, arguing against my professor’s double standard. I was berated in front of the entire class. I learned then that my views were not tolerated or valued in this class. Unfortunately, mine is not an isolated case.
According to the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, the University of Alabama has a speech code rating of “yellow.” This means the university has ambiguous protections for free speech. Here in Mississippi, Alcorn State and the University of Southern Mississippi have a yellow rating, whereas Ole Miss and Mississippi State University have a green rating, which indicates no serious threats to free speech. Jackson State and Delta State have red ratings, which means they have “at least one policy that both clearly and substantially restricts freedom of speech.”
Consider this “Student Life” regulation at Delta State: “Words, behavior, and/or actions which inflict mental or emotional distress on others and/or disrupt the educational environment at Delta State University are strictly prohibited.” Many things can cause “mental or emotional distress.” President Donald Trump’s election continues to be a source of great distress for some college students. Should Delta State ban students from displaying Trump bumper stickers or wearing Trump T-shirts? Will the school’s computer servers block internet sites that post pictures of Trump? A regulation prohibiting “mental or emotional distress” is too vague and could lead to administrative actions that violate students’ First Amendment rights.
While both public and private institutions should protect and encourage free speech, publicly funded universities are legally obligated to do so. The U.S. Supreme Court has affirmed this First Amendment right repeatedly: including for religious speech and activities (Widmar v. Vincent (1981)). Concluded the Court: “With respect to persons entitled to be there, our cases leave no doubt that the First Amendment rights of speech and association extend to the campuses of state universities.”
Many institutions have “vice presidents of diversity” who focus solely on that issue. We see diversity based on race, gender and sexual orientation, yet not so much on diversity of thought. Most university professors identify as liberal, and many go further left than that.
A 2016 Econ Journal Watch study that analyzed faculty voter registration records found that Democrats outnumbered Republicans 12 to 1 at 40 leading U.S. universities. Such bias wouldn’t be a problem if we were on a level playing field. But all too often professors and college administrators use their positions of authority and power to intimidate and silence students like me. Many conservatives feel afraid of voicing their opinions because of the political correctness that plagues our nation’s educational system.
In addition, conservative guest speakers often face unfriendly welcomes and threats. Even former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice backed out of a commencement address at Rutgers University after fierce opposition from students and faculty. In response, then-president Barack Obama condemned Rutgers’ intolerance. “If you disagree with somebody, bring them in and ask them tough questions,” chided the president. “Don't feel like you got to shut your ears off because you're too fragile and somebody might offend your sensibilities.”
Some on the left may have become hateful and violent, as we have seen from the Steve Scalise shooting and the Black Lives Matter protests, but we have to come together to protect free speech and free association. If we want a free nation that respects all beliefs, we must demand that students have the right to express themselves as protected by the First Amendment.
Daniel Ashford is a research associate at the Mississippi Center for Public Policy.
If we really want former prisoners to become productive citizens, take care of their families, and stay out of jail, we should cut the red tape keeping some of them from getting honest work.
Take the case of “Beth,” a Mississippi woman who made mistakes, served her time, but then wanted a better life. Upon release, Beth entered school with the dream of becoming a dental hygienist. After completing her coursework with honors, Beth discovered she was barred from obtaining a license. In Mississippi, dental hygienists cannot get an occupational license if they have a felony conviction; without a license, they can’t work in their chosen profession.
How many other “Beths” are out there? Too many. About 30 percent of all jobs in the United States require an occupational license. A nationwide study by the Institute for Justice shows that Mississippi requires a license for 55 out of 102 low-to-mid-level jobs. Only 4 states license more. Such licenses may make sense for physicians or other professions, but they aren’t necessary for many other jobs.
In addition, licensing requirements often bar ex-cons from getting meaningful, productive work. Here in Mississippi, licensing restrictions prevent ex-cons from becoming tattoo/body artists, embalmers, dieticians, or athletic trainers. What is the logic in preventing an ex-con from cleaning teeth or helping people stay healthy, or embalming dead people?
To its credit, the Mississippi Department of Corrections (MDOC) encourages convicts to get the skills they need to become productive members of society. One model MDOC is evaluating is a successful program at Louisiana’s Angola Penitentiary that is training inmates in HVAC repair, automotive repair, plumbing, the culinary arts, even seminary studies. Whereas half of Louisiana’s inmates return to prison within five years, only 1 in 10 inmates that have participated in Angola’s two-year vocational training program return. These results are confirmed by a study published by the Center for the Study of Economic Liberty at Arizona State University. According to their research, states with high occupational licensing burdens have a recidivism rate (the percentage of inmates who return to prison) four times higher than states with low occupational licensing burdens.
At many of our prisons, we offer training in how to cut hair, do construction work and install carpet. All of the job training programs in Mississippi prisons do train prisoners for careers they are allowed to enter into upon release. Eliminating licensing prohibitions for ex-cons in other fields would create more options, reducing recidivism and reducing welfare dependency.
We need to stop licensing so many low-to-mid-level professions. We also need to be aware of the disproportionate impact licensing has on minorities. According to a recent White House report, “Laws restricting licensing opportunities for workers with criminal records have a disproportionate impact on Black and Hispanic workers.” The White House recommended adopting standards, as 25 states have done, that require licensing boards to clarify how policies that bar ex-cons from getting a particular license are relevant to that profession. A drug possession conviction, for instance, might be a reasonable basis for denying a Commercial Driver’s License (CDL), but be irrelevant to working as a tattoo artist.
Consider the case of Richard Chunn, a bail agent with a felony conviction stemming from a 1981 guilty plea for marijuana possession. Chunn had a long and successful career as a licensed bail agent until a 2011 state law forbid felons from obtaining bail agent licenses. Chunn sued and won at the Mississippi Supreme Court. Citing a similar case out of Connecticut, the Mississippi court observed that such laws fail “to consider probable and realistic circumstances in a felon’s life, including the likelihood of rehabilitation, age at the time of conviction, and other mitigating circumstances” with the result that “many qualified ex-felons are being deprived of employment.”
Bureaucratic, ham-fisted rules shouldn’t prevent people from turning their lives around. Mississippi should follow the 25 other states that are opening the door to hope and opportunity by adopting reasonable licensing standards for those with a criminal conviction.
Daniel Ashford is a research associate with the Miss. Center for Public Policy (MCPP) and will be entering the MBA program at the University of Alabama in the fall
U.S. Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals Reinstates Freedom of Conscience Law, HB 1523
Today, a three-judge panel of the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals reinstated the “Protecting Freedom of Conscience from Government Discrimination Act,” more commonly known as HB 1523.
Passed by the Mississippi legislature in 2016, HB 1523 is intended to limit government action against people who believe marriage is a sacred relationship between a man and a woman. It provides protection for photographers, florists, and other wedding vendors who believe a wedding is a religious ceremony and that they shouldn’t be forced to participate in a ceremony that violates their deeply-help religious beliefs.
Today’s ruling did not address the merits of the law, including the question of its constitutionality. The ruling was limited to the question of whether the plaintiffs were qualified (known as “having standing”) to challenge the law in court. The Court said the plaintiffs did not have standing, because the law never went into effect and had caused them no injury except that they were offended by it. “Injury in fact,” not merely being offended by a law, is a prerequisite to having standing in federal court.
The court called the basis of the legal challenge “quite radical” because it would abandon long-held rules for standing which “are essential to preserving the separation of powers and limited judicial role mandated by the Constitution.” The Court also observed, “HB 1523 does nothing to compel the behavior of these plaintiffs; it only restricts the actions of state government officials.”
After HB 1523 was signed into law by Governor Bryant in April of 2016, it was ruled unconstitutional by U.S. District Judge Carlton Reeves on June 30, just minutes before it was to take effect. Attorney General Jim Hood refused to appeal that ruling, so Governor Bryant engaged pro bono counsel to represent him in appealing the decision.
Maine Governor Paul LePage and eight Republican attorneys general filed an amicus brief in support of the law. As they point out, “The law addresses marriage and does not even mention sexual orientation… HB 1523’s plain purpose is to protect individual rights to free expression and the free exercise of religion in our pluralistic society - a laudable goal that governments in this Nation have pursued since the Founding.”
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A new law creates transparency and requires warrants to keep seized property.
Under a new law signed by Governor Phil Bryant on Monday, law enforcement agencies will be required to report “descriptions and values of seized property, which police department seized it, and any court petitions challenging the seizures.
The law will also require police to obtain a seizure warrant within 72 hours.” If a warrant is not obtained in certain cases, the property will be given back to its owner. That from a report from Reason.com which published a critical expose on Mississippi’s asset forfeiture abuses in January.
Lee McGrath of the Institute for Justice(IJ) praised the passage of the bill. IJ had graded Mississippi an “F” on forfeiture transparency earlier this year but now says, “Mississippi is now the third state this year and the 19th state since 2014 to have passed civil forfeiture reform.”
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Download the PDF of the Letter
October 27, 2016
Dr. Virginia Young, Superintendent
Newton Municipal School District
205 School Street
Newton, MS 39345
RE: Constitutional Right to Freedom of Religion
Dear Dr. Young:
My name is Mike Hurst and I am the Director of the Mississippi Justice Institute ("MJI"). We are a division of the Mississippi Center for Public Policy, an independent, non-profit, public policy organization based in Jackson that works to promote and protect the concepts of free markets, limited government, and strong traditional families. MJI's mission is to represent
Mississippians whose state or federal Constitutional rights have been threatened or violated, and to defend the principles and ideals of MCPP within and throughout the courts.
I read with astonishment the October 13, 2016, letter addressed to you from an out-of-state group called the Freedom From Religion Foundation ("FFRF"), threatening legal consequences for the actions of a high school football coach baptizing one of his players.
The facts as they now stand: Newton High School football coach Ryan Smith engaged in private religious expression outside school hours, after his official duties as a coach had ended, on private property, not during a school-sponsored event, and with other individuals wishing to express their own privately-held religious beliefs. He did not request, encourage, or require anyone, including his players, to attend or participate in this private expression of his and others' religious beliefs. Under these specific circumstances, there was absolutely no constitutional violation by Coach Smith, as he, like all of us, have a First Amendment right under our Federal Constitution and a right under our Mississippi Constitution to freedom of religion.
The allegations by FFRF, taken to their logical conclusion, would prevent any school or government employee from being able to attend a church where a student also attends and prohibit that government employee from ever speaking to students or others at their church about their private religious beliefs. Such allegations are outrageous, ludicrous and in direct contravention of the religious freedoms upon which our country was founded!
The First Amendment to the United States Constitution forbids the government from "prohibiting the free exercise" of religion of private individuals. U.S. Const., Amend. I. This restriction applies to state and local governments through the Fourteenth Amendment. Cantwell v. Connecticut, 310 U.S. 296, 303 (1940); Lovell v. Griffin, 303 U.S. 444, 450 (1938). In addition, the Mississippi Constitution states that "the free enjoyment of all religious sentiments and the different modes of worship shall be held sacred." Miss. Const., Art. III, Section 18 (1890). The United States Supreme Court has rejected the notion that public school employees relinquish First Amendment rights by virtue of their government employment. See Tinker v. DesMoines Indep. Cmty. Sch. Dist., 393 U.S. 503, 506 (1969) ("It can hardly be argued that either students or teachers shed their constitutional rights to freedom of speech or expression at the schoolhouse gate."); Pickering v. Bd. of Educ., 391 U.S. 563 (1968).
Government may not exclude or suppress the speech of private individuals for the singular reason that their speech is religious. See Good News Club v. Milford Cent. Sch., 533 U.S. 98 (2001); Rosenberger v. Rector & Visitors of the Univ. of Va., 515 U.S. 819 (1995); Capitol Square Review & Advisory Bd. v. Pinette, 515 U.S. 753 (1995); Lamb’s Chapel v. Ctr. Moriches Union Free Sch. Dist., 508 U.S. 384 (1993); Widmar v. Vincent, 454 U.S. 263 (1981). As the Supreme Court explained in Pinette:
[P]rivate religious speech, far from being a First Amendment orphan, is as fully protected under the Free Speech Clause as secular private expression. ... Indeed, in Anglo-American history, at least, government suppression of speech has so commonly been directed precisely at religious speech that a free-speech clause without religion would be Hamlet without the prince.
Pinette, 515 U.S. at 760. While the First Amendment forbids religious activity that is established by the government, it also protects religious activity that is initiated by individuals acting privately. As the Court explained in numerous cases, "there is a crucial difference between government speech endorsing religion, which the Establishment Clause forbids, and private speech endorsing religion, which the Free Speech and Free Exercise Clauses protect." Bd. of Educ. v. Mergens, 496 U.S. 226, 250 (1990) (plurality op.).
These assaults on our religious freedoms by those with an agenda to dismantle our Constitution and our founding principles are the exact types of cases MJI was created to litigate. Thank you for your courage in the face of such threats to protect everyone's right to express their religious beliefs privately in accordance with our federal and state constitutions.
No one likes a bully, and we will not stand by while some out-of-state group threatens our fellow citizens with legal actions for doing nothing more than exercising one's constitutional rights. The Mississippi Justice Institute stands ready, willing and able to defend the actions of those like you who seek to protect such rights as well as others who simply want to exert their unalienable rights privately, which our state and federal Constitutions were intended to secure.
Sincerely,
Mike Hurst, Director
Mississippi Justice Institute
Mississippi Center for Public Policy
By Forest Thigpen
To hear this commentary click here.
What happens when two Constitutional rights are in conflict?
After the Roe v. Wade abortion decision, the federal government and almost all states enacted conscience protections for health professionals whose deeply-held beliefs or moral convictions would not allow them to assist in performing an abortion.
Last year, another Supreme Court decision created potential conflicts for people of faith. There now exists the freedom of religion and the freedom of same-sex couples to marry. What happens when those two rights conflict?
HB 1523 provides the framework for addressing that question so that both of those rights can be exercised.
If bakers and florists choose not to be involved in a same-sex wedding, the same-sex couple will still be able to exercise their right to get married. But if the government were to force the bakers and florists to participate, those business owners would not be allowed to exercise their right to the free exercise of religion.
For more perspective on this issue, and to read the bill for yourself, go to mspolicy.org.