Mississippi Today
‘Voting feels like a battle’: In Mississippi, a group of Black women is reimagining voter turnout
This article is part of U.S. Democracy Day, a nationwide collaborative on September 15, the International Day of Democracy, in which news organizations cover how democracy works and the threats it faces. To learn more, visit usdemocracyday.org.
SOUTHAVEN, MISSISSIPPI — The training in northwest Mississippi that Cassandra Welchlin led was focused on get-out-the-vote efforts, but the longtime community organizer wanted to make space to sing.
Ain’t gonna let nobody turn me around, turn me around …
“Come on, y’all!” Welchlin told the crowd of nearly 100, who joined in on the next verse. Turn me around …
Ain’t gonna let nobody turn me around. I’m gonna keep on walking, keep on talking, marching up to freedom lane …
“I am so happy to have y’all in the house,” she said at one point. “If y’all could see what I see.”
What Welchlin saw that August morning were the faces of Black women — and a lot of them. Their interests, varied and historically overlooked, are at the center of a new kind of intentional voter engagement training.
“Black women mobilize their communities,” she told The 19th. “They are the catalyst.”
Welchlin is executive director of the Mississippi Black Women’s Roundtable, a civic engagement and policy advocacy organization whose members, all of them Black women, have traveled the state for months to host trainings called the “Power of the Sister Vote Boot Camp.”
On paper, their goal with the boot camps is an increase in voter turnout among Black women in the Mississippi counties where they visit. They also want to create a years-in-the-making pipeline to better mobilize Black women, whom Welchin views as the glue holding together democracy, especially in a state and region that continues to be impacted by policies that have historically suppressed Black voters.
“I was raised in a house of Black women — my aunties, my grandma, and then the neighborhood of elders,” she said. “I know the power of Black women taking care of Black women, and taking care of the community.”
At the trainings, Welchlin and her staff dress in military fatigues — a “boot camp” theme that has manifested into the advertisement the group uses to promote the events and the T-shirts they distribute to attendees. But there is a deeper significance.
“Voting feels like a battle in Mississippi,” she explained.
Mississippi is one of just three states that does not offer early voting to all residents, and one of eight states that does not offer online voter registration. The 12-hour window that many residents have to cast a ballot on Election Day can be difficult for people with irregular work shifts, child care responsibilities and challenges to accessing transportation.
Welchlin said she knows Black women overwhelmingly run their households. They also take on the added responsibility of getting their communities to the ballot box.
Yet Black women in Mississippi are the largest group of women in low-wage jobs, face one of the highest rates of poverty in the country and rank among the lowest in elected representation at the statehouse.
“I wanted to do something a little bit more strategic and formal that would bring excitement,” Welchlin said. “I just kind of sat with the idea of, ‘What would make people want to come?’”
The Mississippi Black Women’s Roundtable, which has long made issues like equal pay, Medicaid expansion and paid family and medical leave a priority in their work, is an affiliate of the National Coalition on Black Civic Participation. The organization has programming focused on Black women’s civic participation, including a “Sistervote” initiative.
Melanie Campbell, president and CEO of the National Coalition on Black Civic Participation, and convener of the national Black Women’s Roundtable programming, credited Welchlin for designing a training theme that not only has the potential to turn out more voters, but could lead to more Black women becoming leaders who run for office. She added that Welchlin is taking their political power “to another level.”
“Having a Cassandra Welchlin in leadership, who’s doing unique things — there could be more Black elected officials in the state of Mississippi, because the demographics are there. But when you talk statewide, it’s not reached its full potential,” she said.
There are about 1.9 million registered voters in Mississippi, where the governor’s office, Senate and House of Representatives are controlled by Republicans. Welchlin’s group estimates that more than 123,000 Black women in the state did not vote in the past three election cycles. The group’s goal is to increase voter participation among these women by 10 percent this November. Black women voters in the counties the group has targeted for boot camps are among those who have voted most infrequently since 2021.
It’s part of why Allytra Perryman, deputy director of the Mississippi State Conference of the NAACP, which has partnered to help host some boot camps, also sees such potential in mobilizing them.
“When you train a Black woman on how to do anything, you train a community,” she said.
On the morning of the boot camp, Velvet Scott seemed to be everywhere.
As director of civic engagement and voting rights for the Mississippi Black Women’s Roundtable, she was ready to help roll out attendee tables and chairs; she was there to open boxes and hand materials to roundtable staff. She and Welchlin made sure the check-in table had updated registration lists, lunch was ordered and the child care in a nearby room was set up.
“Today we’re going to go through, of course, important information, but we’re going to have fun while doing it,” Scott told the women, many already wearing the matching boot camp T-shirts.
Their meeting space was attached to a church on a hill — New Hope Missionary Baptist Church — nestled along a road filled with so many churches it’s called Church Road. Among the permanent signage adorning the room were Biblical-themed messages of hope: “We will not fail nor be discouraged, till our mission is complete….”
“We welcome you today to be energized and to be educated,” said Pamela Helton, a leader within New Hope and the wife of the church pastor, in opening remarks.
Earlier, Welchlin seemed determined to shake the hands of every person who walked through the doors. For those she knew, she offered a hug. “So glad to see so many beautiful Black women,” she said at one point. “We comin’.”
When Welchlin helped host the first boot camp ahead of last year’ gubernatorial race, her organization did not collect data about the trainings. Anecdotal feedback showed a clear interest in organizing Black women around voter turnout, but the full scope of the programming’s reach in its pilot run is unclear.
“We realized that we had a gap,” Welchlin said. “But part of it had to do with capacity on our end to collect that data and do the follow-up.”
Scott, who joined the Mississippi Black Women’s Roundtable late last year, has committed to doing things differently. She honed a data mindset while first working in insurance, a job that brought her into the homes of Black and Brown people who increasingly sought her guidance about available social services. In 2018, Scott began volunteering at a youth-focused civic engagement organization and then joined the staff full time.
At the Mississippi Black Women’s Roundtable, Scott tries to capture more information about the organization’s approach to community programming. That’s meant more of a focus on spreadsheets, more surveys and more individual follow-ups to ensure attendees have support afterward.
Scott has tweaked the boot camps since they launched in April in order to make them more accessible. She’s made some trainings available on weeknights instead of Saturdays, when people tend to be most busy with family responsibilities. She has sometimes shortened the hours of programming to see if a tighter agenda keeps up engagement. She recently helped organize a virtual training.
As a mother to a newly walking toddler, she tries to think about what the attendees might need. She, like Welchlin, feels strongly about onsite child care. (During the Southaven training, Scott stepped away to breastfeed her child.) She ensures that a meal is provided during the trainings, as well as a gift card. The group set aside roughly $50,000 to run the program this election cycle, according to Scott. They’ve been under budget thanks to partnerships with other civic engagement groups.
Scott believes strongly in the power of Black women organizing their communities.
“We don’t live single-issue lives,” she said. “So to uplift Black women in the room is to say, ‘Hey, I see you. We’re going to work on this together, we’re going to be in community together, and we’re going to be in fellowship together.’”
Scott also wants to find the balance in her work. She’s tried to move away from an unspoken expectation in community organizing that she must be go-go-go. She doesn’t want to burn out, and she wants to be present with her family.
“Rest is resistance,” Scott said, who referenced research on the topic. “And advocates deserve joy.”
When Jessica Orey hears Welchlin’s singing, she perks up. Orey is attending alone, and the music comforts her.
As a young adult, Orey jumped into organizing through a local NAACP chapter. Those meetings also made space for “freedom songs” used at the height of the Civil Rights Movement. It’s why Orey was impressed by its emphasis in Southaven.
“She’s kind of bringing back the old school type-feel of it,” Orey said of Welchlin. “Like, hey, we’re going to sing our way through. This is what’s going to push us to the next level.”
Welchlin said her mentor, Hollis Watkins, the late civil rights activist who founded the voting rights organization Southern Echo, taught her the freedom songs that he once sang at mass organizing meetings.
“It’s teaching a new generation about what the meaning of song is, and what these words mean,” she said. “And so it’s a history lesson, while it’s also a spiritual blessing to our souls.”
Sheneka Bell is also in the room alone, listening along.
At 45, Bell is a longtime voter but has not been active in voter turnout efforts. But politics continues to seep into her life — from the national debate about reproductive rights, to local property rezoning. Last year, Bell joined the local county chapter of the NAACP.
“I have a responsibility to understand what’s going on in my neighborhood and beyond,” she said.
In some ways, Orey felt compelled to be at the boot camp: Her grandmother is Delores Orey, a longtime civil rights activist who worked alongside key leaders of the Civil Rights Movement.
“This is all I know. This is what Big Mama taught us,” said the 36-year-old, referring to her grandmother. “This is what Big Mama pushed for. So if any injustice is around me, it’s like, ‘What would Big Mama do?’ A lot of this stuff is ingrained. It’s a part of my DNA.”
After her grandmother died in 2014, Orey stepped back from community organizing. But she wants to get involved again, and she felt like the boot camp was a first step. Orey has since signed up for roundtable updates and alerts from several civic engagement groups. She recently participated in a GOTV event in Jackson.
“I know it’s time for me as a former advocate,” she said. “I need to get my shoes back in the game. There’s work to be done.”
Since the boot camp, Bell has looked into signing up to be a poll worker. She is open to phone banking, and recently showed her nieces how to check their voter registration statuses.
“I’m new to this space,” she said. “I’ve never done any of this before.”
Welchlin is not surprised that women like Orey and Bell are drawn to these endeavors in Mississippi, a state that played a key role in the long fight for universal voting rights. It is home to historic voter registration drives like Freedom Summer, and it is the birthplace of activists like Fannie Lou Hamer.
Civic engagement groups say the struggles continue.
In July, a federal court ordered Mississippi policymakers to redraw some state legislative maps that they established in 2022, after the court concluded that the maps illegally diluted the political power of Black residents.
Among the areas impacted by the racial gerrymandering is DeSoto County, which includes Southaven, the site of the August boot camp.
Some noted a recent state law over the voters rolls and technical issues at precincts during last year’s close governor’s race. Some polling precincts in Hinds County, home to the capital city of Jackson, ran out of ballots. Long lines were reported and some people were seen leaving polling locations without voting. More than 80 percent of Jackson residents are Black.
The state also has one of the most restrictive disenfranchisement bans in the nation, taking away voting rights from people who are convicted of certain felonies, including nonviolent crimes.
Welchlin cautioned against ignoring inequity around the ballot box in Mississippi, especially as Republican lawmakers advance voting restrictions around the country. They have increasingly claimed without proof that there is widespread voter fraud, and such policies often appear in states with large Black and Brown populations.
“Mississippi is part of the fabric of the struggles in the South,” Welchlin said. “We have a history, and a muscle, and a foundation in which we have built.”
As the boot camps in Mississippi wrap up this election cycle, its ripple effect is coming into focus. A state lawmaker recently expressed interest in running a boot camp. At least one organization is now trying to offer similar programming targeting Black men. And the umbrella organization’s Michigan affiliate has reached out about replicating some of boot camp programming.
“We know that their data is going to look different, but we’re giving them the template to adjust it the way they need,” she said. “It’s a model, and Michigan is going to be testing it.”
Welchin has tried to lean into the joy of the work ahead, despite the obvious obstacles. With Black women by her side, she feels empowered to find a way.
“Good things do come from the South, and we know that Black women have been a part of making that happen,” she said.
To check your voter registration status or to get more information about registering to vote, text 19thnews to 26797.
This article first appeared on Mississippi Today and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.
Mississippi Today
IHL deletes the word ‘diversity’ from its policies
The governing board of Mississippi’s public universities voted Thursday to delete the word “diversity” from several policies, including a requirement that the board evaluate university presidents on campus diversity outcomes.
Though the Legislature has not passed a bill targeting diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives in higher education, the Institutions of Higher Learning Board of Trustees approved the changes “in order to ensure continued compliance with state and federal law,” according to the board book.
The move comes on the heels of the re-election of former President Donald Trump and after several universities in Mississippi have renamed their diversity offices. Earlier this year, the IHL board approved changes to the University of Southern Mississippi’s mission and vision statements that removed the words “diverse” and “inclusiveness.”
In an email, John Sewell, IHL’s communications director, did not respond to several questions about the policy changes but wrote that the board’s goal was to “reinforce our commitment to ensuring students have access to the best education possible, supported by world-class faculty and staff.”
“The end goal is to support all students, and to make sure they graduate fully prepared to enter the workforce, hopefully in Mississippi,” Sewell added.
On Thursday, trustees approved the changes without discussion after a first reading by Harold Pizzetta, the associate commissioner for legal affairs and risk management. But Sewell wrote in an email that the board discussed the policy amendments in open session two months ago during its retreat in Meridian, more than an hour away from the board’s normal meeting location in Jackson.
IHL often uses these retreats, which unlike its regular board meetings aren’t livestreamed and are rarely attended by members of the public outside of the occasional reporter, to discuss potentially controversial policy changes.
Last year, the board had a spirited discussion about a policy change that would have increased its oversight of off-campus programs during its retreat at the White House Hotel in Biloxi. In 2022, during a retreat that also took place in Meridian, trustees discussed changing the board’s tenure policies. At both retreats, a Mississippi Today reporter was the only member of the public to witness the discussions.
The changes to IHL’s diversity policy echo a shift, particularly at colleges and universities in conservative states, from concepts like diversity in favor of “access” and “opportunity.” In higher education, the term “diversity, equity and inclusion” has traditionally referred to a range of efforts to comply with civil rights laws and foster a sense of on-campus belonging among minority populations.
But in recent years, conservative politicians have contended that DEI programs are wasteful spending and racist. A bill to ban state funding for DEI in Mississippi died earlier this year, but at least 10 other states have passed laws seeking to end or restrict such initiatives at state agencies, including publicly funded universities, according to ABC News.
In Mississippi, the word “diversity” first appeared in IHL’s policies in 1998. The diversity statement was adopted in 2005 and amended in 2013.
The board’s vote on Thursday turned the diversity statement, which was deleted in its entirety, into a “statement on higher education access and success” according to the board book.
“One of the strengths of Mississippi is the diversity of its people,” the diversity statement read. “This diversity enriches higher education and contributes to the capacity that our students develop for living in a multicultural and interdependent world.”
Significantly, the diversity statement required the IHL board to evaluate the university presidents and the higher learning commissioner on diversity outcomes.
The statement also included system-wide goals — some of which it is unclear if the board has achieved — to increase the enrollment and graduation rates of minority students, employ more underrepresented faculty, staff and administrators, and increase the use of minority-owned contractors and vendors.
Sewell did not respond to questions about if IHL has met those goals or if the board will continue to evaluate presidents on diversity outcomes.
In the new policy, those requirements were replaced with two paragraphs about the importance of respectful dialogue on campus and access to higher education for all Mississippians.
“We encourage all members of the academic community to engage in respectful, meaningful discourse with the aim of promoting critical thinking in the pursuit of knowledge, a deeper understanding of the human condition, and the development of character,” the new policy reads. “All students should be supported in their educational journey through programming and services designed to have a positive effect on their individual academic performance, retention, and graduation.”
Also excised was a policy that listed common characteristics of universities in Mississippi, including “a commitment to ethnic and gender diversity,” among others. Another policy on institutional scholarships was also edited to remove a clause that required such programs to “promote diversity.”
“IHL is committed to higher education access and success among all populations to assist the state of Mississippi in meeting its enrollment and degree completion goals, as well as building a highly-skilled workforce,” the institutional scholarship policy now reads.
The board also approved a change that requires the universities to review their institutional mission statements on an annual basis.
A policy on “planning principles” will continue to include the word “diverse,” and a policy that states the presidential search advisory committees will “be representative in terms of diversity” was left unchanged.
This article first appeared on Mississippi Today and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.
Mississippi Today
Closed St. Dominic’s mental health beds to reopen in December under new management
The shuttered St. Dominic’s mental health unit will reopen under the management of a for-profit, Texas-based company next month.
Oceans Behavioral Hospital Jackson, a 77-bed facility, will provide inpatient behavioral health services to adults and seniors and add intensive outpatient treatment services next year.
“Jackson continuously ranks as one of the cities for our company that shows one of the greatest needs in terms of behavioral health,” Oceans Healthcare CEO Stuart Archer told Mississippi Today at a ribbon cutting ceremony at its location on St. Dominic’s campus Thursday. “…There’s been an outcry for high quality care.”
St. Dominic’s 83-bed mental health unit closed suddenly in June 2023, citing “substantial financial challenges.”
Merit Health Central, which operates a 71-bed psychiatric health hospital unit in Jackson, sued Oceans in March, arguing that the new hospital violated the law by using a workaround to avoid a State Health Department requirement that the hospital spend at least 17% of its gross patient revenue on indigent and charity care.
Without a required threshold for this care, Merit Health Central will shoulder the burden of treating more non-paying patients, the hospital in South Jackson argued.
The suit, which also names St. Dominic’s Hospital and the Mississippi Department of Health as defendants, awaits a ruling from Hinds County Chancery Court Judge Tametrice Hodges-Linzey next year.
The complaint does not bar Oceans from moving forward with its plans to reopen, said Archer.
Oceans operates two other mental health facilities in Mississippi and over 30 other locations in Louisiana, Oklahoma and Texas.
“Oceans is very important to the Coast, to Tupelo, and it’s important right here in this building. It’s part of the state of Mississippi’s response to making sure people receive adequate mental health care in Mississippi,” said Lt. Governor Delbert Hosemann at the Nov. 21 ribbon cutting.
Some community leaders have been critical of the facility.
“Oceans plans to duplicate existing services available to insured patients while ignoring the underserved and indigent population in need,” wrote Hinds County Sheriff Tyree Jones in an Oct. 1 letter provided to Mississippi Today by Merit Health.
Massachusetts-based Webster Equity Partners, a private-equity firm with a number of investments in health care, bought Oceans in 2022. St. Dominic’s is owned by Louisiana-based Catholic nonprofit Franciscan Missionaries of Our Lady Health System.
Oceans first filed a “certificate of need” application to reopen the St. Dominic’s mental health unit in October 2023.
Mississippi’s certificate of need law requires medical facilities to receive approval from the state before opening a new health care center to demonstrate there is a need for its services.
The Department of Health approved the application under the condition that the hospital spend at least 17% of its patient revenue on free or low-cost medical care for low-income individuals – far more than the two percent it proposed.
Oceans projected in its application that the hospital’s profit would equal $2.6 million in its third year, and it would spend $341,103 on charity care.
Merit Health contested the conditional approval, arguing that because its mental health unit provides 22% charity care, Oceans providing less would have a “significant adverse effect” on Merit by diverting more patients without insurance or unable to pay for care to its beds.
Oceans and St. Dominic’s also opposed the state’s charity care condition, arguing that 17% was an unreasonable figure.
But before a public hearing could be held on the matter, Oceans and St. Dominic’s filed for a “change of ownership,” bypassing the certificate of need process entirely. The state approved the application 11 days later.
Merit Health Central then sued Oceans, St. Dominic and the State Department of Health, seeking to nullify the change of ownership.
“The (change of ownership) filing and DOH approval … are nothing more than an ‘end run’ around CON law,” wrote Merit Health in the complaint.
Oceans, St. Dominic’s and the Mississippi Department of Health have filed motions to dismiss the case.
This article first appeared on Mississippi Today and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.
Mississippi Today
How Mississippi’s Supreme Court Runoff Election Could Impact Criminal Cases
Mississippi voters have dealt defeat to one conservative state Supreme Court justice and forced a moderate justice into a Nov. 26 runoff, with the final outcome possibly making the court more open to considering the rights of criminal defendants.
The nine-member court is largely conservative but justices have recently split in high-profile decisions that sharply affected state politics, including a ruling that shut down citizen-led ballot initiatives in Mississippi and allowed some state control over local criminal cases in its majority-Black capital. The court has also rendered rulings that have made the state increasingly unfavorable to defendants appealing their cases.
“The ability of death row inmates in particular, and inmates in general, to access the courts has been recently curtailed significantly,” Matthew Steffey, a professor at Mississippi College School of Law, told The Marshall Project – Jackson and Bolts following the Nov. 5 election.
Justice Dawn H. Beam joined the majority in those decisions, acquiring a reputation of being hostile to appeals by criminal defendants, and she ran for reelection this fall as the Republican Party’s favored candidate. However, she lost in the state’s 2nd District on Nov. 5 to David P. Sullivan, a defense attorney who has worked as a public defender.
Judicial races in Mississippi are nonpartisan and Sullivan has given few explicit signals about his judicial outlook. He has supported at least some criminal justice reforms and would be the third justice with experience as a defense attorney on this court. Some reformers nationwide have pushed for more professional diversity on the bench.
Even if Sullivan turns out to be more centrist or independent than Beam on criminal law, any overall shift in power on the court depends on the outcome of a runoff election next week.
Two-term Justice Jim Kitchens and challenger Jenifer B. Branning will face each other in the Nov. 26 runoff election after neither won more than 50% of the vote on Nov. 5. The runoff will take place across the 22 counties that make up the Supreme Court’s central district, including Hinds County, home to Jackson. Throughout the campaign, the state GOP targeted Kitchens with attacks, while Branning, a Republican state senator with a conservative voting record, is endorsed by the party.
Kitchens is one of two reliably moderate-to-liberal high court justices. Justices from among an additional group of four sometimes veer away from the majority, as well, but can be more unpredictable, and this group does not vote as a bloc.
Quinn Yeargain, a Michigan State University law professor who closely watches state courts, recently analyzed the court’s voting patterns and found Beam was consistently more conservative than Kitchens in recent cases. Yeargain told The Marshall Project – Jackson and Bolts that conservative and liberal voters often have few signals about how to select a candidate in judicial races. “It’s very hard to label the justices,” they said.
Sullivan — whose father was a Mississippi Supreme Court justice from 1984 to 2000 — called himself a “conservative” throughout his campaign. But he has also touted the value of judicial independence and criticized Beam for campaigning on her endorsement by the state Republican Party.
“I think that rubbed a lot of people the wrong way,” Sullivan told the Sun Herald newspaper, speaking of Beam’s use of the endorsement. “Judicial races are nonpartisan for a reason. A judge’s impartiality could be called into question.”
Sullivan has broad legal experience, but much of his career has focused on private criminal defense while also doing some public defense work. He told The Marshall Project – Jackson and Mississippi Today that he supported a new administrative rule handed down in 2023 by the state Supreme Court to require continuous legal representation for poor criminal defendants from the beginning of their cases. An investigation by The Marshall Project, ProPublica and the Northeast Mississippi Daily Journal last year found, however, that many courts were unready at the time to implement the new representation rules.
During the campaign, Sullivan told The Marshall Project – Jackson and Mississippi Today that more work is needed to improve public defense.
Kitchens has also advocated for public defense reforms during his two terms on the court. He told a committee of legislators last year that the “playing field is far from level” between prosecutors and poor defendants.
On other criminal justice issues, he has sometimes dissented from opinions upholding death sentences. His decisions have scrutinized prosecutorial conduct and inadequate legal representation.
Branning, the Republican senator, has a voting record on criminal justice issues that suggests a harsher approach toward criminal defendants. She has supported higher mandatory minimum sentences and reclassifying misdemeanors as felonies, has opposed expansion of parole and was among only a few lawmakers who voted against legalizing medical marijuana.
She also supported increasing the jurisdiction of a controversial, state-run police force inside the majority-Black city of Jackson as well as increasing state control over many felony cases in Jackson. The Supreme Court unanimously curtailed much state power over these felony cases, but a majority left some control intact, with Kitchens and another judge dissenting.
Branning did not respond to questions from The Marshall Project – Jackson and Mississippi Today during the Nov. 5 campaign about her possible judicial outlook.
Kitchens was a prosecutor and then in private practice before joining the bench. Branning is a practicing attorney who typically handles civil cases.
The winner of the Nov. 26 runoff will join Sullivan on a court that in recent years has been restricting the ability of people who say the legal system has wronged them to seek relief, legal experts told The Marshall Project – Jackson and Bolts this month.
Krissy Nobile, director of the state’s Office of Capital Post-Conviction Counsel, said it’s become “increasingly more difficult to correct a wrongful conviction.” Her office provides legal counsel for indigent people on death row.
She said a number of recent cases showed the barriers the high court has erected for criminal defendants appealing their convictions, and demonstrated indifference to civil rights violations. Kitchens disagreed with the majority, in full or in part, in all but one of the appeals, which the court unanimously denied.
In a case earlier this year, the Court ruled to monetarily fine an incarcerated person for filing any future post-conviction relief petitions that lacked merit. Kitchens joined a dissenting opinion condemning the fine. In another, the court denied a man who argued that his lawyers were ineffective and that they did not challenge prosecutorial misconduct or false forensic evidence presented by a medical examiner with a checkered past. The court’s majority denied the motion, and in the process, overturned a precedent that allowed ineffective counsel as an adequate reason to give a case another look in some types of appeals. Kitchens dissented, along with two other justices.
“For decades in Mississippi, the Court held that it would correct errors if there was a violation (of) a person’s fundamental rights,” Nobile said. But she added this has changed considerably. Now, if you land a terrible lawyer who rushes your case, “You are out of luck,” she said, “even if your core constitutional rights have been clearly violated.”
For the court’s majority, Nobile added, “The legal technicalities now trump a person’s constitutional rights.”
The runoff is the nation’s final supreme court race of the year. Thirty-two states held elections for their high courts earlier this year, resulting in a muddled picture, with liberals and conservatives each gaining ground in different places, Bolts reports.
Mississippi’s runoff outcome will heavily depend on turnout and the composition of the electorate. In the Supreme Court’s central district, voters split narrowly between Democrat Kamala Harris and Republican Donald Trump in the presidential election on Nov. 5, but the runoff is just two days before Thanksgiving and will likely see a large dropoff in turnout. Branning received 42% of the vote in the first round, and Kitchens received 36%, with three other candidates making up the rest.
There will also be a runoff the same day in the Gulf Coast area between Amy Lassiter St. Pé and Jennifer Schloegel for an open seat on the state Court of Appeals. The Court of Appeals hears both criminal and civil cases that have been appealed from lower courts. The Mississippi Supreme Court can hear cases directly on appeal or can assign cases to the Court of Appeals.
Observers agreed that against the national legal backdrop, neither a Kitchens victory nor a Branning victory would lead to a seismic change since neither outcome would flip the court’s conservative lean. Still, a modest shift could impact some of the most controversial cases, such as a rare 5-4 decision that upheld the death sentence in Willie Manning’s case.
A Kitchens win, coupled with Sullivan’s upset earlier this month, would deal the Republican Party rare setbacks in a state where it has been dominant and could put moderate forces in a position to grow their numbers further in future elections.
“You might end up with a normal conservative court,” law professor Yeargain said, “instead of one of the most conservative courts in the country.”
This article first appeared on Mississippi Today and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.
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