Mississippi Today
Mississippi Legislature bigger than most even as population lags
At noon on Jan. 2, one of the largest law-making bodies in the country – the Mississippi Legislature – will convene for a 120-day regular session.
Mississippi has one of the largest legislatures even though the state ranks as the 35th most populous of the nation’s 50 states. And Mississippi’s population ranking has been dropping in recent decades. In 2000, for instance, Mississippi was the 32nd most populous state.
But for decades, Mississippi has had one of the nation’s biggest legislatures in terms of number of members.
Whether the fact the Mississippi Legislature is so large is good or bad for the state depends on perspective. It could be argued that Mississippi legislators represent fewer people, making them closer and more responsive to their constituents. Others could argue that the Legislature is bloated and would be more efficient with fewer members.
Perspective.
Only 13 states have lower chambers larger than the 122-member Mississippi House of Representatives. And only four states have upper chambers with more members than the 52-member Mississippi Senate.
Tiny New Hampshire has by far the largest lower chamber with a 400-member house. The second largest house is Pennsylvania with 203 members, but its senate has two fewer members than does the Mississippi Senate.
Minnesota, which also has a house larger than Mississippi’s, has the nation’s largest senate with 67 members. California, the most populous state, has a smaller legislature than Mississippi.
The large size of the Mississippi Legislature means each member represents fewer people than do legislators in most states. Only 12 states have senate districts where the members represent fewer people than Mississippi senators, according to information compiled by Ballotpedia using U.S. Census apportionment data. The ideal size of a Mississippi Senate district to ensure the federally mandated equal distribution of the population across the state is 56,998. The smallest ideal size is North Dakota at 16,589. California is the largest at 989,419 people per senate district – far larger than the average U.S. House district, which is about 750,000 people. The national average size is 167,820 people per state senate district.
In the house, the ideal size of a Mississippi district is 24,294 compared to the national average of 61,169. California, again, is the largest at 494,709 while the ideal size of a House district in New Hampshire is 3,448. Only 11 states have House districts where members represent fewer people than House members in Mississippi represent.
Like so many issues in Mississippi, race played a major role in the development of the legislative districts. According to the Mississippi Historical Society, the legislative districts were apportioned in a manner to form “the legal basis and bulwark of the design of white supremacy in a state with an overwhelming and growing negro majority.” Each county was assigned a certain number of legislative districts and done so in a manner to ensure a white legislative majority. The 1890 Constitution said the Senate should be composed of between 30 and 45 members while the House should be between 100 and 133.
In 1962, the state constitution was amended to place the number of senators at not more than 52 and the number of House members at not more than 122.
In 1966, the state lost a landmark federal redistricting lawsuit. Federal judges ruled the Mississippi system established in 1890 to assign legislative districts to counties was unconstitutional because it diluted Black voter strength. In 1977 after lengthy appeals and legal maneuvering, it was finalized that the Mississippi Legislature had to be made up of what was called single-member districts that had to be near equal in population.
The state Constitution was amended again based on that federal court mandate ensuring equal population. The size of the Legislature was not changed, though, by the 1977 amendment.
Occasionally there are efforts to reduce the size of the Mississippi Legislature. In the 1990s, then-Lt. Gov. Eddie Briggs tried to gather enough signatures to place on the ballot a proposal to reduce the Legislature’s size. That effort did not go very far before it was dropped.
Any modern effort to reduce the size of the Mississippi Legislature would likely be opposed by multiple groups, including by many Black leaders.
The Mississippi Legislature, once designed in a manner to limit Black representation, now has 56 African American members (14 in the Senate and 42 in the House.) Only Georgia and Maryland have more Black members serving in their legislatures.
Of course, African Americans still remain under-represented in the Mississippi Legislature. The state has a Black population of about 38%, the highest in the nation, but about 32% of Mississippi legislators are African American.
This article first appeared on Mississippi Today and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.
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Mississippi Today
On this day in 1875
Nov. 2, 1875
The first Mississippi Plan, which included violence against Black Americans to keep them from voting, resulted in huge victories for white Democrats across the state.
A year earlier, the Republican Party had carried a majority of the votes, and many Black Mississippians had been elected to office. In the wake of those victories, white leagues arose to challenge Republican rule and began to use widespread violence and fraud to recapture control of the state.
Over several days in September 1875, about 50 Black Mississippians were killed along with white supporters, including a school teacher who worked with the Black community in Clinton.
The governor asked President Ulysses Grant to intervene, but he decided against intervening, and the violence and fraud continued. Other Southern states soon copied the Mississippi plan.
John R. Lynch, the last Black congressman for Mississippi until the 1986 election of Mike Espy, wrote: “It was a well-known fact that in 1875 nearly every Democratic club in the State was converted into an armed military company.”
A federal grand jury concluded: “Fraud, intimidation, and violence perpetrated at the last election is without a parallel in the annals of history.”
This article first appeared on Mississippi Today and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.
Mississippi Today
Mississippi Today’s NewsMatch Campaign is Here: Support Journalism that Strengthens Mississippi
High-quality journalism like ours depends on reader support; without it, we simply couldn’t exist. That’s why we’re proud to join the NewsMatch movement, a national initiative aimed at raising $50 million for nonprofit newsrooms that serve communities like ours here in Mississippi, where access to reliable information has often been limited.
In a time when trusted journalists and media sources are disappearing, we believe the stakes couldn’t be higher. Without on-the-ground, trustworthy reporting, civic engagement suffers, accountability falters and corruption often goes unaddressed. But it doesn’t have to be this way.
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We’ll examine what’s at stake if local newsrooms lose press freedoms and will discuss how you, as members of the public, can help protect it. This event is open to Mississippi Today and Verite News members as a special thank-you for supporting local journalism and standing with us in this mission. Donate today to RSVP!
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This article first appeared on Mississippi Today and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.
Mississippi Today
Hinds County loses fight over control of jail
The Hinds County sheriff and Board of Supervisors have lost an appeal to prevent control of its jail by a court-appointed receiver and an injunction that orders the county to address unconstitutional conditions in the facility.
Two members from a three-judge panel of the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals agreed with decisions by U.S. District Judge Carlton Reeves to appoint a receiver to oversee day-to-day jail operations and keep parts of a previous consent decree in place to fix constitutional violations, including a failure to protect detainees from harm.
However, the appeals court called the new injunction “overly broad” in one area and is asking Reeves to reevaluate the scope of the receivership.
The injunction retained provisions relating to sexual assault, but the appeals court found the provisions were tied to general risk of violence at the jail, rather than specific concerns about the Prison Rape Elimination Act. The court reversed those points of the injunction and remanded them to the district court so the provisions can be removed.
The court also found that the receiver should not have authority over budgeting and staff salaries for the Raymond Detention Center, which could be seen as “federal intrusion into RDC’s budget” – especially if the receivership has no end date.
Hinds County Board of Supervisors President Robert Graham was not immediately available for comment Friday. Sheriff Tyree Jones declined to comment because he has not yet read the entire court opinion.
In 2016, the Department of Justice sued Hinds County alleging a pattern or practice of unconstitutional conditions in four of its detention facilities. The county and DOJ entered a consent decree with stipulated changes to make for the jail system, which holds people facing trial.
“But the decree did not resolve the dispute; to the contrary, a yearslong battle ensued in the district court as to whether and to what extent the County was complying with the consent decree,” the appeals court wrote.
This prompted Reeves to hold the county in contempt of court twice in 2022.
The county argued it was doing its best to comply with the consent decree and spending millions to fix the jail. One of the solutions they offered was building a new jail, which is now under construction in Jackson.
The county had a chance to further prove itself during three weeks of hearings held in February 2022. Focuses included the death of seven detainees in 2021 from assaults and suicide and issues with staffing, contraband, old infrastructure and use of force.
Seeing partial compliance by the county, in April 2022 Reeves dismissed the consent decree and issued a new, shorter injunction focused on the jail and removed some provisions from the decree.
But Reeves didn’t see improvement from there. In July 2022, he ordered receivership and wrote that it was needed because of an ongoing risk of unconstitutional harm to jail detainees and staff.
The county pushed back against federal oversight and filed an appeal, arguing that there isn’t sufficient evidence to show that there are current and ongoing constitutional violations at the jail and that the county has acted with deliberate indifference.
Days before the appointed receiver was set to take control of the jail at the beginning of 2023, the 5th Circuit Court ordered a stay to halt that receiver’s work. The new injunction ordered by Reeves was also stayed, and a three-person jail monitoring team that had been in place for years also was ordered to stop work.
This article first appeared on Mississippi Today and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.
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