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Mississippi Today Ideas is a platform for thoughtful Mississippians to share their ideas about our state’s past, present and future. Opinions expressed in guest essays are the author’s own and do not necessarily represent those of Mississippi Today. You can read more about the section here.

For decades, Mississippi child care advocates have exposed the broken system that parents of young children have struggled to navigate. The problems appear so overwhelming that it is difficult to know where to begin to fix an early childhood education program that is so vital to the state’s economic success.

Yet, there is in reality a fix that does not require additional state funding. The problem could be solved to a large extent by freeing up unspent federal Temporary Assistance for Needy Families funds to be used for child care.

But through the years, misinformation, lack of transparency and warring political ideologies have resulted in the lack of support for freeing up the TANF funds.

The current income level is 85% or below the state median income, or $51,424 for a family of four, to receive financial assistance for child care. This fact directly contradicts public opinion that programs administered through the Mississippi Department of Human Services are entitlement programs to support non-working families.

That perception is simply incorrect. The federal law to support low-income workers and those seeking employment, the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families and the Child Care Development Block Grant, both require parents to work, be in school or serving as a foster parent. These programs exist to support working families by offsetting some of the high costs of child care.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, the federal government recognized that child care was essential for keeping parents in the workforce. As a result, approximately $200 million was allocated to the Mississippi Department of Human Services to distribute to eligible child care centers to continue serving parents. The grants extended for several years until the funds were spent.

While the special COVID-era child care funding being provided by the federal government has ended, the overall child care funds being allocated to Mississippi are approximately the same as before COVID. Even with the return of the funding to the pre-Covid era levels, we still have viable solutions to the child care crisis .

It is in large part decisions made within the state Department of Human Services that have resulted in a waiting list of about 20,000 families who need child care to work. The TANF funds could be freed up to be used to offset the loss of federal COVID funds and ease or even eliminate the waiting list.

It makes sense to do so. Numerous surveys conducted by business associations and research centers support the critical need for child care. In 2024, the Mississippi Economic Council surveyed members and found 77% of the businesses reported child care as a problem and 44% said it was their biggest problem.

When the COVID funding ended, many child care programs lost the support that helped them remain open. As a result, some families were forced to leave the workforce because they could no longer find or afford reliable care.

In 2025, after the funds were depleted, more Mississippi child care programs closed than during any other time in recent memory, leaving a void in available child care.

The situation should not be so bleak. For years, the state Department of Human Services has not allocated all funding the state received through the federal TANF program designed to help low-income families. Millions of dollars remain with no explanation as to why the funds are not being used to relieve the child care crisis.

Rumors have been rampant as to why the money is not transferred from one program to another. The lack of full disclosure by the state Department of Human Services makes it hard to know how much is going unused annually.

After several years of the argument that the federal regulations do not allow it, state Human Services officials finally revealed the money can be legally used for child care through a direct spending transfer.

When asked several months ago by Senate Public Health Committee Chairman Hob Bryan why the state chooses not to use the TANF funds for child care, Mississippi Department of Human Services Executive Director Robert Anderson said he would investigate. Bryan asked if help was needed since this was such a serious situation. Bryan was told no.

The amount of money in the TANF account is thought to be over $100 million, but the true current figure has not been released. Figures reveal the amount needed for eligible families and to keep the child care centers in business is $60 million.

Moving the money does not require a law or state appropriation. The director can approve the transfer. No additional funding is needed this year if the transfer is made. 

To avoid a future child care crisis, there is a need for a state law requiring unspent federal TANF funds to be legally transferred annually to child care programs. This one act will eliminate the stress on child care businesses and families.

This one act can pay off big time. If just 7% of parents who are not working due to child care challenges entered the workforce, the state would stand to make $1.2 billion a year.

The state pays nothing. Yet the return would be enormous. There is no reasonable explanation why this is not done immediately. It is up to Gov. Tate Reeves and Human Services Director Anderson to provide the leadership.

Parents, businesses and child care directors are waiting.

Bio: Cathy Grace is the early childhood specialist at the North Mississippi Education Consortium. She has worked in the early childhood field for over 50 years as a first -grade teacher, consultant to state and nonprofit agencies and child care programs. Grace taught early childhood education at four state universities and retired from Mississippi State University as professor emerita. She also directed the planning and implementation of public kindergarten while employed at the Mississippi Department of Education. She has worked in Washington as an early childhood advocate and presented research numerous times at state, regional and national conferences. 

Clinton residents who came out to the city’s municipal court building Monday night offered varied reactions to a new data center local officials recently announced. The development is one of the latest in a surge of recently announced data center projects in Mississippi.

Many of the speakers at Monday’s meeting expressed hope the city will finally earn revenue from a building that for years went unused, while others focused on limited information as well as a high energy demand.

“I’m cautiously optimistic about this,” said Shea Whitfield, who said his family has lived in Hinds County for six generations. “What good is an industrial park if we don’t bring industry into it?”

The center is set to move into a facility on Industrial Road Drive, just north of I-20 and west of downtown Clinton.

Mayor Will Purdie said he expected to be able to release more details on the project “in the next few weeks.” The property had been a Milwaukee Tool facility from 2021 to 2023, but before that was a wiring plant that closed in 2009.

Clinton leaders have yet to reveal the new owner, but on March 4, WLBT reported that Amazon would own the data center, according to records it obtained.

Purdie said the facility will be “air cooled,” meaning it won’t need the large amounts of water other data centers use to prevent equipment from overheating. The data center in Clinton will also connect to the Entergy grid, meaning it won’t have the same air or noise pollution concerns brought up in places like Southaven, he added.

He also shared projections for city revenue from a fee-in-lieu of taxes, or FILOT, agreement with the company: In the first year, the Clinton Public School District stands to receive $3 million, and the city’s budget is set to receive an additional $2 million. Purdie said those annual gains will decrease over the next decade before climbing back up in year 11. The project will also create 50 permanent jobs as well as 800 to 1,000 temporary construction positions, the mayor said.

Another resident, Jill Hiers, was concerned the immense amount of energy the center will need will “tank” the local power grid if more transmission lines aren’t built. She also said the city should focus on bringing in businesses that will have more engagement with the local community.

“We want to bring people that will, you know, sponsor our Little League team,” Hiers said. “This is not that. It will bring some money into our city, it will not bring a good steward to our city.”

Tia McArthur, an insurance broker, said the data center will bring an “exponential” increase to local tax collections. Still, McArthur recognized that only having limited details about the project arouses suspicion among locals.

“We do need to have an honest discussion, we should avoid all appearances of evil,” she told the mayor and Board of Aldermen. “When you can and what you can, please disclose with the public.”

Resident Greg Dreaper questioned how much research city officials had done before approving the FILOT agreement in January.

“What I don’t see is how y’all are making decisions, whether it’s percentages (of the company’s revenue going back to the city) or whether it’s environmental impacts,” Dreaper said. “ I would like to see those studies and those numbers so that we can make educated decisions.”

An out-of-state businessman is one step closer to his goal of building a manufacturing facility behind the Metrocenter Mall after the Jackson City Council voted to approve his rezoning request on Monday. 

However, he may no longer own some of the land he wants to build on after years of failing to pay property taxes. 

Christopher Jones, a South Carolina businessman, wants to build a small industrial facility behind the abandoned mall in west Jackson to manufacture recycled plastic foam and concrete blocks through his company, BioCrete Global Manufacturing. 

If it comes to fruition, the project would bring economic development to a part of Mississippi’s capital city virtually bereft of industry. Jones has said that this project would be phase one of his larger plan to revitalize the area.

But after Jones repeatedly failed to pay years of property taxes, two of the three parcels he asked the city council to rezone became state-owned, tax-forfeited property last year, according to the Hinds County landroll. 

The secretary of state’s office confirmed on Monday that the state owns the two parcels. Jones is set to lose the third parcel to the state this fall if he does not pay his back taxes. 

Jones says he paid part of the taxes but the county made administrative missteps that have made him distrustful of the process so he is waiting for pending litigation to pay the remainder.

The businessman is now suing Hinds County and the state of Mississippi to regain his ownership of the vacant lots. While the county is not contesting the lawsuit, Jones is facing opposition from the attorney general’s office. 

Despite the legal issues, the council on Monday voted 6-0 to approve the rezoning request – from mixed use to industrial – after asking no questions about Jones’ ownership of the lots. Several of Jones’ trainees, many of whom were wearing name tags and white lab coats, broke out into loud applause after the vote.  

“We are not in danger of not doing what we say we are going to do,” Jones told the council. “So we are going to do it no matter what, no matter if we get the participation that we need. We’re dug into this. We have a lot of investment already, and we just can’t see it fail.” 

After the meeting, Ward 5 council member Vernon Hartley said he didn’t ask about Jones’ unpaid taxes because the businessman had included a warranty deed with his rezoning application that he submitted to the city in January. 

When Mississippi Today told Hartley the county landroll shows the state of Mississippi owns two of the three parcels that Jones wants to redevelop, the councilman said he did not want the city to be the reason a project fails. 

“We’re going to allow it to go until it doesn’t go,” Hartley said. 

Ward 2 council member Tina Clay said she was not aware that Jones was delinquent on his taxes but that she still would have voted for the rezoning. If Jones’ proposal falls through, Clay reasoned the rezoning could help another future developer. 

“I mean, we zoned the land, we didn’t zone him,” she said.

Ester Ainsworth, the city’s zoning administrator, said the legal department spoke with Jones about the unpaid taxes but that she hasn’t seen anything on the landroll showing ownership has changed. 

“That’s something that’s going to have to be worked out in another realm,” she said. “Like I said, the information that we have shows that he does (own the parcels).”

The warranty deed shows that Jones purchased the property in 2022, but he has failed to pay his taxes since, according to the landroll. 

Like many property owners who lose land through Mississippi’s notoriously dysfunctional tax sale process, Jones is alleging that he never received proper notice the county was going to put his property up for sale. 

This argument often works in Mississippi courts, since many counties do not provide owners with a certified notice their property will be in a tax sale — a routine process through which individuals and limited liability companies bid on properties with unpaid taxes in exchange for a future interest they can use as leverage to get the original owner to repay back taxes. 

In the case of Jones’ lots, no one bid on the parcels, so they were “struck” to the state in 2023. Jones had until last year to maintain his clear ownership of the properties by paying the back taxes, but he didn’t do that. 

Hinds County is not contesting the lawsuit. But the attorney general’s office is putting up a fight, filing a motion last month that Jones should not be able to argue he never received notice because he didn’t need one – since he’s known for years about the unpaid taxes. 

“Christopher Jones is coming to the Court with unclean hands, as he knew that he would have to redeem the subject tax parcels … or they would mature to the State of Mississippi,” Nancy Morse Parkes, a special assistant to the attorney general, wrote in the March 6 motion. 

Parkes’ basis for alleging this was a statement she said Jones made to her “off the record” following a court proceeding last year – also concerning Jones’ unpaid property taxes – in which he stated “that he would pay all of the taxes.” 

The parcels on which Jones intends to build the manufacturing facility are lots of cracked and barren concrete behind the Metrocenter. Rezoning them was a key step in Jones’ yearslong efforts to redevelop part of the dilapidated mall in west Jackson. 

To gin up support, Jones has held press conferences and employment fairs, claiming the facility will create 200 jobs along Jackson’s U.S. 80 corridor.  

“We know that this’ll be a gamechanger,” he told Mississippi Today, adding that “Jackson and Hinds County could benefit very well from the workforce here getting some really good jobs in the city.” 

Jones said that he intends to pay the back taxes on the property after he receives a court order establishing that he is the rightful owner. He called the tax sales “an adverse taking.” 

“There was a lot of dispute concerning the property and the taxes and notifications,” he said. “All those things were helter skelter, everything was all over the place, no clarification or anything, and so the clerk did not perform the duties as outlined by statute.” 

The businessman added that he doesn’t trust the system in Hinds County because he did in fact pay a sliver of the back taxes he owes – about $1,900 on one of the parcels last fall. He said he didn’t understand why the county once again sent the parcel to a tax sale. 

A review of the landroll shows that’s because Jones paid just one year of back taxes on one parcel, when he in fact owed three years of taxes for three parcels. The total owed amounted to nearly $20,000, according to the landrolls.  

“Yeah, I don’t understand the process, that’s what I’m saying,” Jones told Mississippi Today. “I don’t understand the process in Mississippi. If you pay the money, then everything should clear out and it shouldn’t take months to do that, but when I paid that small amount and nothing happened, it continued to still reflect the tax situation for that year.” 

This is not the first time big plans have been proposed for the former Metrocenter property. In 2022, WLBT reported a woman who purchased the Metrocenter Mall and pledged to revitalize it was arrested on a warrant out of Jefferson County in southwest Mississippi for failing to pay restitution on a 2013 conviction for false pretenses.

“We cannot go through any more trauma of hearing projects being announced, projects being proposed and not following through on them,” said Ricky Jones, the president of the West Jackson Community Improvement Association, describing his hesitations about BioCrete’s project, even as he spoke in favor of it at the council meeting. 

Metrocenter opened in 1978. At the time, it was “Mississippi’s largest and most complete under-one-roof shopping center,” according to the Clarion-Ledger. 

Activity at the shopping center began to decline in the 2000s, a trend suffered by many malls across America, but in Jackson it was accelerated by white flight and divestment from the city’s western and southern areas. 

Big stores moved out, and while there were attempts to revive it, the 1,250,000-square-foot mall shut its doors completely in 2022. 

“I don’t know what it is about the Metrocenter, but nothing goes smoothly,” Christopher Jones said. 

The Ole Miss women’s basketball team will make their fifth straight NCAA Basketball Tournament appearance when they play Gonzaga in the first round at 2 p.m. Friday in Minneapolis.

Ole Miss coach Yolett McPhee-McCuin doesn’t take that for granted.

“It’s hard, y’all,” McPhee-McCuin said after the pairing was announced. “Not everybody gets to dance in March.”

Ole Miss is the fifth seed in the NCAA West Regional. Gonzaga is the 12-seed. The Gonzaga-Ole Miss winner will play the winner of 4-seed Minnesota, the host team, and 13-seed Green Bay in Sunday’s second round. The winner of Sunday’s game will advance to the Regional finals at Sacramento next week.

Ole Miss has advanced to the Sweet 16 in two of the past three years.

“Our goal is to get past the Sweet 16,” McPhee-McCuin said. “Our schedule has prepared us to play anyone, whenever and wherever. This is an exciting time.”

Hard to believe that it was just six years ago that Ole Miss, in McPhee-McCuin’s second season in Oxford, went winless (0-14) In the Southeastern Conference and and finished 7-23 overall. The Rebels were 15-12 the next year, reaching the NIT finals, and have been in the NCAA Tournament ever since. Ole Miss has won 127 games over the last five seasons.

The current Rebs will take a 23-11 record into the tournament, having defeated three top-five teams during the course of the season. Ole Miss beat fifth-ranked Oklahoma 74-69 on the road Jan. 8, defeated fifth-ranked Vanderbilt 83-75 at Birmingham Jan. 30, and beat fifth-ranked Vandy again in the SEC Tournament 89-78 on March 6. This marks the first time Ole Miss has beaten three top-five teams in a single season.

The Rebels also own victories over No. 18 Notre Dame and No. 21 Tennessee. Perhaps just as impressively, they extended then-undefeated and second-ranked Texas to the final buzzer in a 67-64 defeat at Austin. Clearly, Ole Miss has shown it can compete with the nation’s best teams. 

But Gonzaga (24-9) will come into the tournament playing its best basketball, having defeated Oregon State 76-66 for the West Coast Conference championship on March 10. Gonzaga has won five of its last six and 10 of its last 12. The only loss since Feb. 14 came in overtime, 92-91, at Portland.

Gonzaga and Ole Miss have played in the NCAA Tournament once before in 2023, when the Rebels won a first-round game 71-58 at Stanford.

Minnesota (22-8) will have a decided home floor advantage at Williams Arena in Minneapolis, where the 18th ranked Golden Gophers won 13 of 16 home games during the regular season.

Ole Miss senior Cotie McMahon leads the Rebels with a 19.9 points per game scoring average and was recently named a second team Sporting News All American. She will be no stranger to Williams Arena, where she played as a three-year starter and standout at Ohio State before transferring to Ole Miss.

McMahon is one of eight transfers who have helped Ole Miss this season after the Rebels suffered heavy graduation losses from last season’s Sweet 16 team.

Welcome to Mississippi Explained, our weekly news quiz to test your knowledge of this week’s news. 🧠

It’s time for lawmakers to set the state’s over $7-billion budget, but can they do it without Gov. Tate Reeves calling a special session?

The House and Senate still have not agreed on one of the biggest budget issues, teacher pay. The House’s latest proposal includes language that could expand school choice. 

Quiz question: What can the governor do to partially reject appropriation bills?

Email your answer to newsletter@mississippitoday.org with your first name and last initial, and we’ll shout you out in the next quiz post.

Last week’s answer: Send a bill to conference committee

READ MORE: Can they do it? Time for House, Senate to set a budget: Legislative recap

Think you know the news? Take more quizzes like this one: sign up for The Today, our daily newsletter, and never miss a chance to test your knowledge.

A new exhibit at the Two Mississippi Museums in Jackson showcases the diversity of the state’s contributions to the United States as the nation celebrates its 250th birthday.

The Mississippi Made exhibit consists of 250 individual artifacts that showcase Mississippians’ work and achievements in the fields of agriculture, manufacturing, music, fashion, science, literature, sports and the arts.

Items on display include a 19th century cotton gin, Elvis Presley’s bathrobe, a cartoon by Marshall Ramsey and a box of Wheaties featuring the late Walter Payton, a NFL Hall of Fame running back, on the front of the box. Another one of the Mississippi Made exhibits is the NASA flight jacket worn by Mississippi astronaut Richard Truly of Fayette, who also served as the administrator of the U.S. National Aeronautics and Space Administration from 1989 until 1992.

“I think everyone can find something that they find interesting in this exhibit,” said Jessica Walzer, curator of collections and exhibits at the Mississippi Department of Archives and History.

She added that the exhibit would be great representation for young Mississippians.

“Mississippi Made brings together objects that tell a broader story about the state’s creativity, industry and innovation,” Michael Morris, director of the Two Mississippi Museums, said in a press release. “Each artifact reflects how Mississippians responded to local needs in ways that shaped life far beyond the state.”

This exhibit is part of the Mississippi Department of Archives and History’s celebrations for America250, a national initiative in honor of the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence. There are events and initiatives at the national, state and local levels leading up to July 4.

The exhibit is on the second floor of the Two Museums. It opened in early March and runs through Nov 6.

Sen. Bradford Blackmon discusses the wild frontier of artificial intelligence, and the potential harm deepfakes can cause if left unchecked. He offered two bills this session that, while unsuccessful, prompted much discussion in the Legislature. One would have protected Mississippians’ right to their name, image and likeness, another would have required AI-generated political ads to disclose the technology’s use.

Judge E. Grady Jolly, who served 35 years on the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals after being nominated by President Ronald Reagan in 1982, died Monday. He was 88.

On the appeals court that handles cases from Mississippi, Louisiana and Texas, Jolly was viewed as a conservative who followed existing law and Supreme Court precedents.

In 1986, Jolly wrote the majority opinion for a three-judge panel that found unconstitutional a Louisiana law requiring schools to teach creationism. The Supreme Court affirmed the panel’s decision in the case Edwards v. Aguillard.

In 2014, Jolly wrote a majority opinion finding as unconstitutional a Mississippi law requiring physicians who perform abortions to obtain admitting privileges at a local hospital. The law was an attempt by then-Gov. Phil Bryant and the Republican-led Legislature to shut down the state’s only abortion clinic, and the clinic sued the state before the law could take effect in 2012. The U.S. Supreme Court in 2016 allowed the appeals court ruling to stand.

Jolly, a native of Louisville, Mississippi, was recommended to the 5th Circuit by Thad Cochran, who was at the time the state’s sole Republican U.S. senator.

Jolly took senior status in 2017, meaning he no longer served as a full-time member of the 5th Circuit. In a tribute at the time, Cochran wrote that Jolly had an exemplary tenure on the bench.

Cochran recalled that when he recommended Jolly for the post, he said Jolly was “’well suited for this important job by reason of his education, philosophy and experience, and I’m confident that he would be one of the outstanding members of the court.’ Now, 35 years later, I am convinced Grady’s service has proven those words accurate.”

Jolly and Cochran became close friends at the University of Mississippi, where they both earned their undergraduate and law degrees. Jolly served as Cochran’s campaign chairman when he first won the Senate post in 1978.

When Jolly was nominated to the bench, he was serving as a private attorney in Jackson. He had previously served as an assistant U.S. attorney in the Northern District of Mississippi and as a trial attorney for the tax division of the U.S. Department of Justice.

At his swearing in, Jolly said, “I do not approach this task believing at all that federal courts are all-wise and all-knowing. Some judges are criticized for arrogance and self righteousness, for attempting to play God. Our powers may seem near that sometimes, but our wisdom falls far short. When I get out of line, I deserve to be criticized.”

Cochran said he had to persuade Reagan to nominate Jolly. 

“I joked with Grady that by the time his nomination was official he would have to take senior status,” Cochran said.

After Jolly was finally put forward, the U.S. Senate confirmed his nomination without a dissenting vote.

When Jackson’s federal courthouse was named for Cochran four months after Cochran retired from the Senate in 2018, Jolly spoke at the ceremony on behalf of the Cochran family. Cochran died less than a year later.

Republican Sen. Roger Wicker, who has been in that chamber since 2007, said in a statement Monday that Jolly “was an outstanding and respected jurist —  a credit to the federal bench and to his native state.”

“He had a quick wit and an even quicker mind,” Wicker said. “He was dedicated to the Constitution and the rule of law. I have been privileged to know him and benefit from his counsel. Mississippi has lost a giant.”

Jolly was known for his sense of humor.

Ilya Shapiro, who served as a law clerk to Jolly, said upon learning the judge was a Johnny Cash fan, he became familiar with the country music legend and told the judge how much he liked Cash.

Without missing a beat, Shapiro, said Jolly responded, “Well, you know, Ilya, I once shot a man in Reno just to watch him die.”

In his 2017 tribute, Cochran said, “ Grady is the epitome of a ‘Renaissance man’ with an acerbic wit and contagious humor.”

State authorizers may force SR1 College Preparatory and STEM Academy, a Canton-based charter school, to close because of faulty financial reporting and poor fiscal management.

The Mississippi Charter School Authorizer Board voted Monday to hold a public hearing to determine SR1 CPSA’s fate. The authorizer board’s executive director would have to appoint a hearing officer, who would schedule the public hearing. 

The authorizer board did not provide a timeline for completing the process. State statute requires notifying charter authorizer board members, school officials and other relevant parties of an administrative hearing at least 30 days in advance.

SR1 CPSA would be the state’s first charter school to reach this stage of the revocation process. No one from SR1 CPSA attended the board’s meeting on Monday. 

The hearing would initiate “a formal review process outlined by state law and the school’s charter school contract,” a statement the charter authorizer board released Monday states. “Revocation proceedings allow the school an opportunity to respond and participate in the process before any final decision is made.”

The authorizer board began the process of revoking SR1 CPSA’s charter at its December board meeting by jumpstarting revocation review, which included setting up a corrective action plan with school leadership and allowing them the opportunity to prove financial solvency.

The board began the most recent process of shuttering the school because it had one day’s worth of cash on hand and submitted its financial audit 23 days late, which does not meet the standard set by the board. The board also recommends schools have 30 to 60 days worth of cash on hand. 

SR1 CPSA has never met its enrollment target, which meant it received less funding from the Mississippi Department of Education. The state funds schools based on a head count and recoups money the following year from schools that overproject their enrollment.  

The authorizer board approved a charter for SR1 CPSA in December 2020 after multiple failed application attempts by Gregory Tamu Green, the CEO of SR1, a Ridgeland-based nonprofit organization that operates the charter school. The school delayed its start from 2022-23 to 2023-24 because of struggles securing space as well as challenges recruiting.

The charter authorizer board has questioned SR1 CPSA’s financial solvency for the past two years. At a March 2024 meeting, board members questioned the school’s ability to fund itself. They also expressed concern with the school’s budgeting.

Green founded SR1 CPSA. His wife, Dorlisa Hutton, serves as the chief operating officer of SR1, the nonprofit parent company, and bears the title of Vanguard Ambassador at the charter school. 

Neither Green nor Hutton could immediately be reached for comment.

A judge considers what should happen with a child who’s been neglected or abused – without ever hearing from the child’s foster parent.

Kids and teens in court can’t bring their trusted relatives and friends for support. 

Biological parents of children in custody are told they could go to jail if they talk to anyone about their situation. 

And attorneys can’t access basic court filings to properly represent their clients.

These are some of the realities inside one of the most secretive systems in the state: Mississippi’s youth courts.

Created in 1979 to oversee both juvenile delinquency and child abuse and neglect cases, Mississippi’s youth court proceedings have long been closed to the public and the records deemed confidential.

A bill gaining traction this legislative session could change that.

Supporters of closed courtrooms say confidentiality protects children. The concern is that, if information spreads, children accused of crimes may be locked out of future opportunities and children who are victims of abuse or neglect may be retraumatized or face stigma and embarrassment. 

Those who favor transparency say that public visibility is more likely to result in accountability – righting institutional wrongs – and better outcomes for children. Judges would still have the discretion, as they have in other courts, to seal sensitive information or bar disruptive people from hearings. 

But, they say, removing the blanket confidentiality could lead to more open communication between families and their communities. This would help the court arrive at better solutions, such as identifying familiar people to care for a child until a judge decides on reunification.

Some folks who have gone through youth courts themselves say the secretive nature is one reason they had such a negative experience. When Zoey Tether was 14, for example, she was separated from the 5-year-old sister she had essentially parented. No one would answer her questions about where her sister was or how she was doing. Their older sister, who was 16 and spared from entering CPS, received even less intel, and at times didn’t even know in what town her siblings lived.

“I was very isolated during my stay in CPS,” Tether said. “It made it really hard to trust anything.”

Tether, who aged out of the system about a year ago, says she got lucky with her foster mom, who still supports her. She has little contact with her sister, who now lives in Florida with extended family. Tether is in college studying social work and political science with hopes of lobbying for positive child welfare changes. At just 20, she’s already identified part of the solution: open the courts.

“Change can’t happen in a closed system,” Tether told Mississippi Today. “If we want the court system to get better, you can’t fix that from directly inside of it.”

Senate Bill 2728, authored by Republican Sen. Brice Wiggins, a judiciary chairman from Pascagoula, is the latest piece of legislation in a string of youth court reforms considered in recent years. 

Among other changes, the bill aims to remove language in the law that prohibits the public from attending youth court hearings and requires an explicit judge’s order for the release of youth court records. 

“I have said this from day one that the blanket closure in these matters fosters distrust and fosters other negative consequences,” Wiggins said. “Every other court in the state of Mississippi is open, and I would submit that that is a hallmark of, honestly, our democracy.”

The Senate passed the bill mostly along partisan lines – most Democrats voting no – in February. The House replaced the bill with its own language, keeping the provisions related to openness, and passed it with almost no opposition in March. Now for the legislation to stay alive, a small conference of legislators from the Senate and House would need to hash out the details of a final bill that both chambers would pass.

“The issues we handle in youth court, I’m telling you, are too personal, especially when you’re dealing with abuse and neglect, for the public,” said Jeffery Harness, a family law attorney and Democratic representative from Fayette who expects to be included in the conference on the bill. “I’ve had to deal with horrible issues in youth court. And I don’t think that’s the proper venue for the public at all.”

Regarding supportive family members, Harness said, “They can still support them outside the courtroom.”

The youth court judges spread across Mississippi’s 82 counties represent one of the loudest lobbies when it comes to legislative changes to the system. But not all youth court judges are the same. Mississippi has a hybrid youth court, meaning some counties are served by permanent elected youth court judges housed inside county courthouses, while other areas have part-time judges – private attorneys appointed as “referees” to the cases – in chancery courts. This has led to wildly inconsistent outcomes for families from county to county.

Tether and others with youth court experiences recently spoke about confidentiality at a joint meeting held by two groups studying youth courts: the Court Improvement Program Statewide Multi-Disciplinary Task Force and the Mississippi Children, Youth and Families Collaboration Initiative. Judges were there.

Adrienne Williams spoke about how, as a foster parent, a judge barred her from courtroom discussions about her now-adoptive daughter, who is medically fragile due to brain damage caused in the early months of her life while under the care of her biological parents.

Initially, Williams said, the biological mother said she wanted the girl to stay with Williams. But over time, communication between the two fractured. Children in youth court are appointed a courtroom advocate called a guardian ad litem, or GAL, but Williams said a GAL never laid eyes on her daughter. 

Most frustratingly, Williams was never able to tell the judge about her daughter’s medical condition – or the countless weekly doctor’s appointments they attended – which would have provided crucial context in making a decision about what happened next.

“Because of this invoking and this confidentiality, it builds this hostility between the biological parent and the person caring for the child,” Williams said. “Because it’s almost like we’re separated, we’re not to talk to each other.”

Williams and her husband endured five years of this, sitting outside the courtroom doors, repeatedly learning little detail other than that the case had been continued.

“I’m truly sorry for that,” said Staci Bevill, a youth court judge in Lee County. “You should have never been treated that way. There are judges out there who would not do that.”

Bevill told Mississippi Today that blanket openness is worrisome especially in the age of social media.

“Our children and families’ futures shouldn’t be defined by their past mistakes or trauma, which are on full display in our courts,” Bevill said.

Certainly, the worst consequences of the secretive policy don’t occur in every courtroom. But the confidentiality clause does protect some judges from scrutiny, said attorney and parent defender Chad King.

“They don’t even know what’s happening in the county next to them,” King said of youth court judges. “Nobody knows what’s going on, and, by the time we hear about it, the damage has been done.”

Harness, who opposes opening the courtrooms, agreed that youth courts lack the structure of other trial courts – resulting in issues such as parties not being properly served. King said this is one reason why children can linger in state custody for so long. Confidentiality also means attorneys lack familiarity with the court, King said, creating a dearth of attorneys who want to practice in this arena and fewer appeals, meaning fewer checks and balances.

But Harness said training employees of the court would be a better solution than opening the courts. Bevill said those who have concerns about the decisions by youth court judges could file a complaint with the Mississippi Commission on Judicial Performance, an avenue she said few explore.

“Normally, youth court hearings are very informal. We do need to improve on due process issues,” Harness said. “The rules of evidence are not really being administered as they should.”

But the public would be exposed to “all kinds of evil stuff,” Harness warned, if youth court were opened.

“I might not win on that issue, but I’m going to stand firm on that,” Harness said.

While King and others have advocated for years for more youth court openness, the seismic proposal came quietly this session.

As part of a years-long effort to bring uniformity to the process, Wiggins’ initial bill contained sweeping changes – such as officially selecting the chancery as home of youth courts statewide. The judges were stunned. 

Bevill, who chairs the Council of Youth Court Judges, sent out a “kill bill” email urging her colleagues to speak against it. A swarm of youth court judges attended a February meeting of the Senate Judiciary A Committee, where the bill originated. The committee ended up passing a slightly watered down version of the bill, which would maintain a hybrid of county and chancery youth courts. But it still contained other striking changes, such as removing confidentiality. 

The judges stood and left the Capitol hearing room in unison, shaking their heads, after lawmakers advanced the bill. Their opposition had been so palpable, Mississippi Supreme Court Chief Justice Mike Randolph sent a memo to all local judges days later, asking them to read the rules of judicial conduct.

“Judicial officers must remain impartial, especially on policy issues, and excessive lobbying would likely violate these rules and erode public confidence in the judiciary’s independence and fairness,” Randolph wrote in his Feb. 12 memo.

If the bill passes, the handling of cases by youth court judges won’t be the only thing thrust into the sunlight. The Mississippi Department of Child Protection Services, which investigates abuse and neglect and makes recommendations to judges about custody, also plays a role in what happens behind closed youth court doors. 

But CPS’s director, Andrea Sanders, said she favors opening the courts. 

“There’s been a myth propagated that because this is about children and the very sensitive details of their lives that we must seal it, and close it, and we must suspend rules of procedure,” Sanders said at the task force meeting.

Instead, Sanders said it is precisely because these cases involve children that they should come with the protections and due process that the existing legal system “is very elegantly designed to give.”

“My plea to the state is: Let’s have transparency in the courtroom,” she added. “Let’s treat it like a court.”

Adelaide Anderson, who spent most of her teenage years in foster care and now works as an advocate for foster youth, only ever saw a judge in her case one time. 

She remembers the excitement of that court date, laying out her clothes ahead of time, anticipating answers about what her future would hold. After that, she bounced from home to home – at least a dozen placements, she estimates, in a matter of three years. Each move was a decision made without her involvement. “Friends thought I went missing,” Anderson said. 

Anderson eventually opted to get her GED and emancipated herself at 17. “No one told me you get benefits if you age out,” she said.

If courtrooms were more open, Christina Simmons Saucier said she would have felt less intimidated in the aftermath of the state taking her five children into custody nearly a decade ago. She said that from the very beginning, parents are not offered the option of inviting a supportive person, such as a therapist, into the conversation.

“So right then, the parent is silenced,” said Saucier, who spent about a year in the courts before she was reunited with her children. She now works as a peer support specialist with the state public defender’s office.

Nationally, states are moving towards more transparency, though 29 still practice generally closed youth courtrooms and 37 do not allow public access to youth court records. Florida has had open youth court proceedings for decades, and Georgia recently made the same move.

“The sky has not fallen,” said Jay Blitzman, a retired judge from Massachusetts who is advocating for open courtrooms in his state. “Some of the dire predictions about all the harm that will befall children have not come to pass.”

Blitzman also pointed out that states that are concerned about privacy could enact a provision to prohibit the publication of names of minors while still keeping the proceedings transparent. Also, courts that choose to open should not expect a flood of onlookers, Blitzman said.

“People aren’t just going, ‘Man I’m bored on a Tuesday, I might as well go watch a family be ripped apart,’” Tether said. “That’s not what’s going to happen.”

When the state determines a child in its custody cannot safely return to his or her biological parent, it is a youth court judge who will order the Termination of Parental Rights or TPR. 

This order, Blizman said, is the familial equivalent of the death penalty – permanently severing a parent from his or her child. With stakes this high, Blitzman argues, courts should be held to the highest evidentiary rigor, but that’s not always the case in youth court.

“More harm than good is done in the name of protecting children and the so-called best interest of the child,” Blitzman said.