The NAACP is suing to stop two new laws designed to give the State of Mississippi more control over the City of Jackson and alleging they amount to race-based discrimination in a 52-page lawsuit the organization filed in federal court Saturday.
Mississippi election officials will be able to purge names from voter rolls more easily if Gov. Tate Reeves signs House Bill 1310 into law.
Jackson residents who commit local misdemeanor offenses could soon appear before an unelected, Mississippi Supreme Court-appointed municipal judge from any part of the State after the Mississippi Legislature sent the final version of House Bill 1020 to Gov. Tate Reeves’ desk. If signed, the bill would take some authority away from elected judges and prosecutors over the 83% Black city’s capitol district.
Mississippi Secretary of State Michael Watson celebrated the passage of new voting restrictions on March 14, 2023, saying that banning “ballot harvesting” is necessary “to make it easier to vote and harder to cheat” in Mississippi elections.
Efforts to expand Capitol Police’s jurisdiction over the City of Jackson and to reintroduce a more limited citizen-led ballot initiative process remain alive in the Mississippi Legislature.
Brad “Kamikaze” Franklin writes that Jacksonians and lawmakers should just name the racist tendencies within the Mississippi Legislature thatHouse Bill 1020 reveals. “We know that you don’t like that Black people are running the capital city (at least not the kind of Black people you prefer), and we know you’re dead set on changing that by whatever means, legislative or otherwise, you can,” he writes.
“The Mississippi Legislature creates laws without input from any experts,” News Editor Ashton Pittman writes. “That held true last week, when, as Kayode Crown reported, lawmakers passed a ban on care for transgender minors without input from one transgender Mississippian or any medical professionals with expertise on the topic.”
Mississippi Senate Bill 2343 would give Capitol Police jurisdiction “relative to the enforcement of all laws of the State of Mississippi within the boundaries of the City of Jackson, Mississippi.”
“We are fiercely independent and report beyond partisanship. We are truth-tellers,” Donna Ladd writes. “We want a transparent government regardless of who or what party is blocking the information from the public.”
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