Mississippi Attorney General Lynn Fitch’s office is asking the U.S. Supreme Court to sharply curtail the federal Voting Rights Act by limiting who can sue to enforce protection against racial discrimination at the ballot box. 

The Mississippi appeal could have significant repercussions nationwide and for the federal law that stems from the Civil Rights era. If the nation’s highest court rules in Fitch’s favor, it would mean civil rights groups could no longer bring a suit on behalf of citizens.

“This direct appeal presents an important legal question that has divided the courts of appeals: whether private parties may sue to enforce section 2 of the Voting Rights Act of 1965,” Fitch’s office writes. “The answer is no.” 

The AG’s office declined to comment on why it filed the appeal, which stems from a lawsuit brought by the Mississippi branch of the NAACP over the state’s legislative districts. The litigation resulted in a federal three-judge panel ruling last year that Mississippi’s legislative districts diluted Black-voting strength in three areas of the state.    

The panel, comprised of all George W. Bush-appointed judges, ordered lawmakers to redraw its districts to give Black voters in three areas of the state a fairer shot at electing candidates of their choice. Special elections for these races are currently ongoing, with the general election scheduled to happen in November. 

Ari Savitzky is a senior attorney with the ACLU voting rights project, and he is one of the attorneys who represented the plaintiffs in the lawsuit. He told Mississippi Today that the plaintiffs will oppose the state’s request. 

“What the Mississippi defendants and the GOP are asking is to overturn 60 years of law and history,” Savitzky said. 

The appeal procedure for redistricting cases is different from normal lawsuits. A member of the U.S. 5th Circuit Court of Appeals sat on the initial three-judge panel, so the state’s appeal will not go to the appellate circuit court. 

Instead, the appeal goes directly to the U.S. Supreme Court, where it must address it in some capacity. The court can ask for additional briefings, oral argument or summarily dismiss it outright. 

If the court does rule in Mississippi’s favor, it would mean only the Department of Justice, under the control of a presidential administration, could sue to enforce the Voting Rights Act. 

Mississippi’s appeal follows a similar case pending before the court. 

Several appellate circuits, including the 5th Circuit, have ruled that private citizens do have a right to sue under the federal act. But the 8th Circuit in 2023 and 2025 said that only the government, not voters and other private parties, can sue to enforce the provision, meaning circuits have been split on the issue.

The Supreme Court paused the 8th Circuit’s ruling in July, but it may agree to hear an appeal in the coming months since three members of the court — Justices Clarence Thomas, Samuel A. Alito Jr. and Neil M. Gorsuch — dissented.

U.S. Rep. Bennie Thompson, Mississippi’s lone Democrat in Washington and someone who has used the courts to enforce civil rights laws, decried the state’s attempt to gut part of the federal law. 

“I’ve been elected all of my adult life, and in every instance, it was through legislation in the Voting Rights Act that created that opportunity,” Thompson told Mississippi Today. “To now try to deny citizens their day in court is the complete opposite of the intent of the Voting Rights Act.”

Delta State University is investigating the death of a student who was found hanging from a tree on the Cleveland campus early Monday.

The student was a 21-year-old Black man from Grenada, Mississippi. Delta State released his name, but Mississippi Today is choosing not to do so pending the results of the investigation.

Col. Michael L. Peeler, director of public safety and police chief at Delta State, said his department was notified a body was found hanging from a tree in the central part of the campus at 7:05 a.m.

While he said there was no evidence of foul play, he asked the Mississippi Bureau of Investigation, the Bolivar County Sheriff’s Department and the Cleveland Police Department to assist in the investigation.

Several scheduled events on campus were canceled.

“Wait here while I check your information. Everything will be alright.” 

That’s what Mario Reyes Rodas’ attorney said the federal immigration officer told his client the morning of Aug. 27 during a traffic stop along Interstate 20 in Rankin County. The Morton resident provided a current driver’s license and work authorization card that has allowed him to work as a landscaper while he sought permanent residence. 

Then came the questions. 

Where are you from? Mexico, Reyes Rodas answered. Do you have a visa or authorization to be in the country? No, the man replied, though he had been trying to obtain permanent residency for years. 

That was enough information for him to be detained, even though he has no criminal record. 

Reyes Rodas left his car on the side of the road as he was detained by U.S. Customs and Border Protection. He was taken to the Immigration and Customs Enforcement office in Pearl to be processed and then to the Madison County Detention Center. Within a week, he was taken to River Correctional Center, an ICE facility in Ferriday, Louisiana.

“He hasn’t seen freedom since then,” said Jeremy Litton, who is representing Reyes Rodas in an ongoing immigration case. 

Reyes Rodas was charged with the civil violation of entry into the country without authorization, his attorney said. 

The 40-year-old father of two was not given a reason for his detainment, his attorney said, nor was there documentation of a warrant to arrest or detain him. 

Litton said his client also was not stopped that day under suspicion of violating a state law, such as speeding. 

Why, then, Litton wondered, was Reyes Rodas detained. A week and a half later came a potential answer. 

On Sept. 8, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that federal immigration officers can stop people without reasonable suspicion based on their apparent race or ethnicity, if they speak in Spanish or accented English, if they are in a place where undocumented immigrants are known to gather and if they work in specific jobs that undocumented people are known to work. 

Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh wrote in the Sept. 8 majority order that multiple considerations taken together “can constitute at least reasonable suspicion of illegal presence in the United States.” 

In her dissent, Justice Sonya Sotomayor argued the Trump administration has declared all Latinos regardless of U.S. citizenship who fit those criteria “are fair game to be seized at any time.” 

Reyes Rodas isn’t the only person detained who doesn’t have a criminal background. 

As of September, 70% of all people held in immigration detention centers around the country have no criminal convictions, according to Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse immigration data by Syracuse University. Of those with criminal convictions, many committed minor offenses such as traffic violations. 

A spokesperson from Customs and Border Protection confirmed the detention of Reyes Rodas and that he was turned over to Immigration and Custom Enforcement for removal processing. An ICE spokesperson was not immediately available for comment. 

Federal immigration agents have conducted immigration enforcement along I-20, including in March and May that resulted in at least 70 arrests and seizure of firearms and ammunition.  

Emmanuel Reyes, the eldest American-born son of Reyes Rodas, remembers finishing work on Aug. 27 when his girlfriend called. 

Don’t worry, she told him, but immigration officers picked up your father. Reyes said the news immediately sent him into a panic. 

Reyes said his father is a loving man of faith who has supported him and his 17-year-old brother, coming to every game, meet and match for the multi-sport athletes. 

His parents came to America 20 years ago to provide support for their family members in Mexico, and they stayed to give their sons a better life. Reyes said he and his brother have grown up aware of their U.S. citizenship and looked for ways to help their parents, including how to help them gain legal status. 

“My dad was trying to live for what he came here for, the American dream,” Reyes said. “ … They wanted to give us opportunities. It’s better here.”

Litton has represented Reyes Rodas since 2019, not long after he was one of more than 600 mostly Latino workers detained in raids at chicken processing plants in central Mississippi. 

That year, he filed an application requesting the cancellation of removal proceedings against Reyes Rodas, which is a defense available to those facing deportation who meet certain requirements, including a clean criminal record, continuous presence in the country for at least 10 years and potential hardship to his U.S. citizenship children if he were deported. 

Litton said the 42B application is a pathway to a green card: permanent residency that allows people to live and work in the United States.   

As they waited for the application to be processed, Litton said Reyes Rodas applied and received authorization to work, which is valid through 2029. That document enabled him to get a Mississippi driver’s license.  

It took several years for Reyes Rodas to be issued notice to appear in immigration court to be able to file the 42B application. His first court date scheduled in 2021 was delayed several times, Litton said. 

By 2023 as they prepared for the hearing, Litton looked up the case and found it was gone, which he said is something that has happened in a handful of other cases relating to the poultry raids. 

Reyes Rodas had a court date scheduled for Tuesday with the LaSalle Immigration Court in Jena, Louisiana. But like his earlier case, the date disappeared off the court calendar, Litton said he learned Friday afternoon. 

As a result, Litton plans to request a bond hearing to argue that Reyes Rodas had valid work authorization and a pending immigration application when he was detained and mention the administrative challenges with his case.  

However, Reyes Rodas may not be able to receive it in light of a recent Board of Immigration Appeals decision stating that immigration judges lack the authority to approve or hear bond requests for those already in the country without authorization. 

Litton said it’s “indefinite detention” for anyone, regardless of when they entered the country. 

This story is part one of our series, The Black Box: Inside Mississippi’s opioid settlement spending. Explore the series.

Mississippi has received tens of millions of dollars in lawsuit settlement money each year since 2022 from corporations that contributed to the opioid overdose epidemic, a public health crisis that’s killed roughly 10,000 people in the state since 1999.

But a Mississippi Today investigation found that in the three years of receiving the funds, public officials across the state reported spending less than $1 million – or less than 1% of the money received so far – on direct measures to prevent more drug deaths.

The attorney general’s office split the money – expected to total around $421 million through 2040 – between Mississippi’s state and local governments. Attorney General Lynn Fitch’s office and the Legislature oversee most of Mississippi’s opioid settlement dollars, but they’ve only spent money on attorneys’ fees so far. The remaining portion – 15% of Mississippi’s funds – goes to cities, counties and towns.

Management of the local dollars has mostly been a mystery until now. Fitch created a contract with towns, cities and counties that allows them to spend their portion on whatever they see fit – unlike agreements in at least 34 other states. They’re also not required to report what they do with the dollars.

But how Mississippi governments spend money is information that can be requested by anyone. From May to August, Mississippi Today filed public records requests with all 147 towns, cities and counties that have received settlement dollars to find out how much they’ve gotten and how they’ve been using the funds.

The newsroom accounted for about $15.5 million and received responses from almost every city and county receiving settlement shares. It filed an ethics complaint against Mound Bayou, the only local government that didn’t provide any information. Mississippi Today tracked how that money is being spent and analyzed the data to determine how much Mississippi is spending to prevent overdoses, treat addiction and connect people with recovery.

Mississippi Today has published a database for anyone to search how local governments are spending opioid settlement dollars.

Here are some of the biggest takeaways:

• Since September 2022, the 146 towns, cities and counties that responded to Mississippi Today reported receiving roughly $15.5 million. Leaders for those governments have spent about $6.4 million of that.

• Around $945,000 has been used to address addiction with the strategies laid out in one of the opioid settlements, which plaintiffs’ lawyers called “an exemplar.” Most of that money has been used to support drug courts and mental health crisis intervention services. All of the states bordering Mississippi report using at least $4 million each – significantly more than Mississippi both in terms of dollars and percentage of total share – on strategies to address the overdose crisis, and most have committed tens of millions of dollars already.

• The remaining $5.4 million is being used for other purposes. Local officials have deposited $4.2 million directly into accounts for general expenses, often making it impossible to track the dollars. Some expenses not related to addiction include police equipment in Oxford and fiber optic cable installation in Jackson. The city of Vicksburg purchased and firefighter suits and donated to a crisis pregnancy center.

• Over the past three years, 20 of the 147 local governments have spent or finalized plans to spend some or all of their opioid settlement shares to address addiction, officials told Mississippi Today, and 53 governments have not spent or made plans to spend any opioid dollars.

• Just one of the 147 governments, Hattiesburg, indicated it would create opportunities for public input on how to spend its opioid settlement dollars. Mayor Toby Barker initiated his plan after Mississippi Today submitted its public records request in May. 

Public health and legal experts who reviewed Mississippi Today’s data said the pattern of Mississippi’s local spending is a problem, as the money was won from companies that profited while residents struggled with addiction.

Representatives for the towns, cities and counties pointed out to Mississippi Today that Fitch’s contract advised them to spend their dollars for any public purpose. The attorney general has minimized the amount of Mississippi opioid settlement money that must be spent addressing addiction. 

While most states have developed plans that say all opioid settlement money needs to go toward addressing addiction, the Mississippi attorney general’s version says the state can use 30% of its dollars on other purposes, the most allowed by the national lawsuit settlements. Fitch included all of the local dollars in that 30%.

In addition to the attorney general’s directive, some city and county officials said the small amounts they were receiving made it difficult to identify the right addiction-related project. They instead highlighted other efforts they have undertaken to address substance use disorder, like funding local drug courts with other public dollars.

Mississippi Today emailed Fitch a letter with these findings, and she did not answer whether she still believes it was the right decision to allow cities and counties such free rein. Her chief of staff, Michelle Williams, said in a statement that the opioid crisis has cost the country hundreds of billions of dollars, and the settlements allow state and local governments to pay for prior opioid expenses over the past three decades. 

She said the attorney general’s office is working with the Legislature and a new state opioid settlement advisory committee to use the majority of Mississippi’s settlement dollars to prevent more overdoses.

“The Attorney General’s Office is committed to doing everything we can to get the money out to where it is needed quickly,” Williams wrote. 

But the state’s share likely won’t be distributed until July 2026, after the Legislature passes its next budget. Until then, the local dollars are the only Mississippi opioid settlement funds expected to be spent on anything besides lawyers’ fees and administrative expenses. 

Dr. Rahul Gupta, former director of the Office of National Drug Control Policy and an expert witness in several of the lawsuits against opioid companies, said these dollars should be an opportunity to prevent more suffering after the defendant companies’ business models led to an unprecedented number of drug deaths.

He said Mississippi’s local spending reminded him of how states used money from the 1990s tobacco lawsuits — for purposes other than ending a public health catastrophe.

“We should have learned a lot from our tobacco settlement funds,” Gupta said. “It’s disheartening and disappointing to see that.”

‘There was just nothing’

In 2022, when Tricia Christensen established the Appalachian Opioid Remediation project, she created a database to track how 13 states in the region spent their opioid settlement dollars. For the next two years, she led a team that pored through Google alerts, media reports and local public meetings in those states, including Mississippi.

She and her team found opioid settlement spending information in every state, except one.

“In Mississippi, there was just nothing,” said Christensen, now a consultant who advises states on how to spend opioid settlement money. “It was like a black box.”

While a few local governments provided Mississippi Today with spending resolutions passed by city and county officials, most appear to be spending their dollars without any public announcement. Many officials didn’t produce any internal documents that detailed how they were using their money and instead emailed the newsroom a few sentences that outlined their expenses.

Officials with McComb and Charleston said they didn’t know how much opioid settlement money they’d received – despite the fact they were already spending it. Mississippi Today referred clerks for the cities to the management firm in charge of distributing national opioid settlement money so they could determine how much their governments had secured.

When they provided the newsroom with that information and their spending, the records showed each had already spent a large amount of their dollars. McComb used $106,500 of its roughly $151,000 for new police cars, and Charleston had used the roughly $1,000 it received for payroll expenses and police supplies.

Dr. Judith Feinberg, a West Virginia University behavioral medicine and psychiatry professor, helped write a set of best practice guidelines for how states can use these dollars to prevent more overdose deaths. She said she believes state officials who don’t require or even encourage public reporting of opioid settlement spending are prioritizing politics over public health.

“If no one writes anything down, then there’s nothing to investigate,” she said.

Not every government provided Mississippi Today with all the requested information. Officials for Rankin County, which is expected to get the third largest amount of opioid settlement money of any local government, provided Mississippi Today with checks they’ve received but no documents that detail how they’ve been spending nearly $510,000. 

In county attorney Craig Slay’s response, he included a copy of Fitch’s contract with local governments. The sentence that says counties can spend opioid dollars on anything they deem appropriate was highlighted.

Slay did not respond to calls and emails from Mississippi Today about the spending, and he didn’t engage with a reporter for the newsroom at a Rankin County Board of Supervisors meeting in August when he was asked how these dollars were spent. 

“The fact that no one has to report is tragic because you don’t know what the money was spent for,” Feinberg said. “And there’s no accounting. That’s really crazy.”

Thinking about the larger picture

Mississippi’s local governments are expected to accept at least $48 million more in opioid settlement funds over the next 15 years.  

Dr. Cathy Slemp led the West Virginia health department as the state battled the country’s deadliest overdose crisis in the late 2010s. She said the unspent dollars could be an opportunity for local elected officials to begin developing the treatment and recovery resources needed to stop more Mississippi drug deaths.

It’s easy to understand why local governments might want to use the funds to plug budget holes, she said. But she cautioned whether that would be the wisest decision, as many Mississippians struggling with opioid addiction still don’t have access to effective treatment. 

“We can continue to just fill holes, or we can think about it in the larger picture,” she said.

Melody Worsham, a peer support specialist for the Mississippi Recovery Advocacy Project, said she’s hopeful this money can eventually find its ways to groups like hers — organizations that rely on the expertise of those who’ve dealt with addiction and can share which strategies may reach others in similar situations.

But she said the management of the opioid settlement funds mirrors a concerning pattern of how officials in Mississippi spend public dollars. 

“When they get the money, the state figures out, the governments figure out how to spend that money as quietly as possible.”

Editor’s note: Mississippi Today sent almost all of its public records requests in mid-June. Local governments responded on dates that ranged from the same day we sent the request to early September. The settlement administrators sent some payments out throughout July, and governments that wrote back to the newsroom in June have likely received more money since then. We’ve noted the date of when we received the information in our database. Additionally, some towns, cities and counties may have used money or formalized spending plans since they responded. 

When governments provided totals with and without interest, Mississippi Today used the total without interest, as more governments responded in that format. Some checks originally earmarked for towns and cities, especially those set to receive relatively little opioid settlement money, were reallocated to their counties. Because of that, the total these governments expect to get may differ slightly from what they will get. 

Mississippi Today special projects intern Maeve Rigney contributed to the data collection for this story. Andrea López Cruzado contributed to the data analysis.

Tens of billions of dollars are being paid to states from some of the country’s largest opioid distributing and manufacturing companies, the result of lawsuits that accused the companies of enabling a catastrophic overdose death crisis. Every state — usually the attorney general — decides who gets the money, how it’s allowed to be spent and whether the families most impacted by addiction can know or advise how the dollars are spent. 

When the first opioid settlements were being finalized in 2021, Mississippi’s main decision maker, Attorney General Lynn Fitch, asked the state’s towns, cities and counties to sign on to an agreement to join the lawsuits. The agreement says local governments receive 15% of Mississippi’s total share, and their elected officials can spend the money like any other public dollars without reporting where the dollars go. 

Nearly 150 Mississippi cities and counties signed onto the agreement, and most started receiving their payments in the fall of 2022. For the next two and a half years, they told their constituents almost nothing about how they were spending their money. 

Beginning in May, Mississippi Today put in records requests to all local governments receiving Mississippi opioid settlement money. One hundred and forty one of the 147 opioid governments that received opioid settlement funds told Mississippi Today how much money they’ve received and how they’ve been using the dollars. Five localities provided Mississippi Today with incomplete information, and Mound Bayou provided the newsroom with no information.

Cities and counties were scattered in the timing of their responses, from a few providing information the same day and others fulfilling requests months later. The presentation of their responses also took a variety of forms; some local record keepers provided detailed spending ledgers and official city or county meeting minutes where elected officials voted how to spend their dollars. Others replied to the email with a few sentences explaining how much money they received and how it’s being used. 

To clearly show how much money local governments have received and how they’ve been using those dollars, Mississippi Today created its database. We broadly identified five pieces of information from the responses: 

• How much money a government has received
• Whether a government’s settlement money is being used for a specific project and what that project is
• Where a government’s settlement money is being deposited into its general fund
• Where a government’s settlement money is unallocated or used for unknown purposes because the officials didn’t respond
• When the locality responded to our request.

To say whether the spending addressed addiction, Mississippi Today compared a government’s response to the list of opioid prevention uses the settlements’ lawyers recommend. 

From there, we sorted the governments into:

• Those that were using settlement money to address addiction
• Those that were not using settlement money to address addiction
• Those that used some settlement money to address addiction 
• Those that did not respond to our request for spending plans 
• Those that have yet to spend their dollars.

When a local government administrator provided official records that showed the money is being spent, Mississippi Today uploaded the documents and linked to the file in the database.

To make sure this information was presented accurately and consistently, Mississippi Today hired an independent fact checker to review the database. The fact checker was not paid based on the results of the assessment. 

This story is part two of our series, The Black Box: Inside Mississippi’s opioid settlement spending. Explore the series.

For the past three years, 147 towns, cities and counties have controlled millions of Mississippi opioid settlement dollars meant to address the overdose epidemic. 

However, elected officials have been much more likely to spend the money on routine government expenses than on addressing addiction, a Mississippi Today investigation found. And they are doing so legally: Attorney General Lynn Fitch allowed them to spend these dollars on any public purpose rather than addressing the public health catastrophe that’s killed over 1,300 Mississippians since the state received its first lawsuit check.

Mississippi Today filed public records requests with all cities and counties that have received National Opioid Settlement dollars to learn how much money each has received and spent. Of the over $15.5 million local governments have received, they’ve used roughly $6.4 million as of this summer. About $4.3 million of that has been designated for routine government expenses. 

Most of Mississippi’s opioid settlement money is controlled by the state Legislature, which tasked an advisory committee with recommending how lawmakers spend the state’s share to treat and prevent opioid addiction. But applications for those dollars only went out last month, and that money is unlikely to be distributed until the Legislature enacts a budget in July 2026. 

Until then, the only Mississippi lawsuit money that can likely address addiction is funds that went to the 147 local governments, which are expected to net around $48 million more in settlements over the next 15 years.  

Melody Worsham, a peer support specialist for the Mississippi Recovery Advocacy Project, has worked to address the harms of the addiction epidemic for over a decade. She said she sees missing resources in the state’s effort to prevent overdose deaths every day, and she hopes the settlement money will eventually go to groups such as hers that build on the knowledge of people who’ve experienced addiction. 

She said that she would be willing to fill potholes herself after Mississippi Today told her the amount of local government opioid lawsuit money being used for city and county general expenses.

“I’ve got people to volunteer to do the potholes if they stop spending the opioid money for that,” she said. “I’m disgusted. I’m disillusioned. I’m actually kind of speechless, I really am.”

Jackson County on the Gulf Coast and the city of Jackson are two of the five local governments that have received the most money in the state to date. Neither are using their dollars to address addiction, records responses show.

Jackson County, the county with the most suspected overdose deaths last year, is using over $1 million for unspecified government expenses. The city of Jackson has spent some of the roughly $547,000 it reported receiving for fiber optic cable installation, office moving expenses and a shelving system. 

Both Jackson County Board of Supervisors President Barry Cumbest and Jackson Mayor John Horhn did not respond to emails asking whether their governments have made the best use of these lawsuit dollars. Records show Horhn took office after the city of Jackson spent some of its settlement money for general purposes.

Mississippi Today could only account for about $945,000 across all 147 localities that has been spent to address and prevent addiction. Most of that went to fund mental health emergency services and drug intervention courts, programs that direct some people struggling with substance use disorder away from jails or prisons and toward treatment programs. 

Officials for the dozens of governments depositing opioid settlement checks into general expense accounts told Mississippi Today that once the money goes into those accounts, it’s impossible to trace where the dollars go. Many of them pointed to a settlement agreement and letters authored by Fitch’s office, which told local governments to use the money however they see fit.

Across the country, there’ve been other instances of local governments spending opioid lawsuit dollars for resources that may not directly address addiction. But unlike Mississippi’s contract, most states’ agreements make elected officials conform to an approved list of uses that are intended to respond to the public health crisis. 

Dr. Judith Feinberg, a West Virginia University behavioral medicine and psychiatry professor, co-authored a guide with other public health professors that lays out how states can use opioid settlement money to prevent more deadly overdoses. After reviewing Mississippi Today’s data, she said the local governments’ spending so far has been “very tragic.”

“From a public health perspective, this is complete and utter bullshit,” she said. 

After Mississippi Today sent Fitch a letter that outlined the local governments’ spending, she did not answer a question about whether she still stood by the decision to allow cities and counties to spend the money on any public purpose.

In a statement, Fitch’s Chief of Staff Michelle Williams said the opioid crisis cost hundreds of billions of dollars, expenses that affected government health care, criminal justice and social safety net services. Williams said the settlements can be used to reimburse cities and counties for some of these costs. 

It’s a different message than Fitch communicated when announcing at least one of the settlements in 2021. When an agreement was finalized with the consulting group McKinsey, her office said the funds were being provided “to address the crisis.”

In a July interview, Williams said that the attorney general’s agreement was the best way to encourage Mississippi’s towns, cities and counties to join the national opioid lawsuits. 

But she said she couldn’t recall if any local governments said they wouldn’t sign on to the lawsuits unless they could spend their money on any purpose, though she believed it helped get more to join. 

Fitch is reported to be considering a run for governor in 2026, which Feinberg said could have played into her decision. 

“It’s just politically to make everyone happy at the local level,” she said. “Like, ‘Oh, here’s a little slush fund for you. Do what you would like.’”

Pine Belt resident Jane Clair Tyner watched her son Asa Henderson struggle with opioid use until he died at 23 years old in 2019. When Mississippi Today told her about the settlement spending of the cities and counties, she said it adds heartache to the grief she continues to carry. 

Tyner said she has no interest in receiving settlement checks from the pharmaceutical companies, as the money would be better used to prevent more overdoses. But the spending shows that Fitch’s new message is the one cities and counties have taken to heart. 

“It’s just incredibly unjust,” she said. “It makes a mockery of our entire justice system. It makes a mockery of court cases. It makes a mockery of settlements.” 

‘The epidemic is marching on’

While U.S. and Mississippi overdose deaths have slightly decreased over the past two years, both the state and national death rates are higher than they were in the late 2010s, when the country’s surgeon general said combating the opioid epidemic was his top public health priority.

Dr. Caleb Alexander, a Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health professor and an expert witness in many of the opioid settlement lawsuits, said all the money Mississippi is receiving is a valuable resource that can prevent more deaths. 

“The epidemic is marching on, and enormous harms continue to occur in cities and counties, big and small,” he said. 

Shortages in the state’s treatment and recovery resources, ones that more local financial support could help address, have likely prolonged the epidemic. A 2023 Journal of the American Medical Association study found that among Mississippians on Medicaid, a federal-state health insurance program for vulnerable people, less than a third of those diagnosed with opioid addiction received effective medication for the disease. 

Sixty-eight of Mississippi’s 82 counties didn’t have any recovery residences, also known as sober living homes, according to a 2022 report from the Public Health Institute. The report says the availability of these homes, which the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration has said is crucial to curbing more overdoses, is among the lowest of any state in the country.

To Tyner, the mother who lost her son to an overdose, these are some of the resource holes that the settlement dollars could help fill. 

“We have an opportunity to open more beds, to create more community mental health centers, to make recovery possible,” she said.

The only government that reported spending its money to improve access to opioid use disorder medication or recovery residences was Horn Lake, which donated about $75,000 to a local treatment center in June. 

DeSoto County has used all of its settlement money for the construction of a new crisis stabilization unit, and Lamar County plans to do the same with its hundreds of thousands of dollars. But these centers are designed for stabilizing people in crisis or experiencing psychosis, and they don’t provide long-term services for addiction.

Melody Madaris oversees one of these units as the executive director of the community mental health center Communicare in north Mississippi. Centers like hers run both crisis stabilization units and addiction treatment programs, and she said local officials who want to prevent more overdoses should look to fund the treatment services instead.

Unlike private rehabilitation centers, addiction treatment programs at community mental health centers serve all regardless of Mississippians ability to pay. Madaris said that makes for difficult financial situations.

“We all operate in the red every year,” she said. 

Some of the Mississippi settlement spending that counts as addressing addiction is unlikely to prevent more overdose deaths, according to public health researchers. The city of Starkville is using about $15,000 for its police to teach the Drug Abuse Resistance Education, or DARE, a program that most research indicates isn’t effective at preventing drug use. 

The city of Clarksdale’s deputy clerk said the government is spending roughly $36,000 so its police and fire departments can buy more naloxone, the opioid overdose-reversing medication. But Worsham, the Mississippi peer support specialist, said the criminal nature of opioid use makes it unlikely people will call law enforcement to respond to an overdose. 

“They’re putting it in the hands of people who are least likely to be able to hand it to the people who need it,” she said. 

David Engel, the Copiah County administrator, said he believes the drug court addiction treatment program his government is sending its settlement dollars to is amazing. 

But beyond that, he said he and the supervisors are unclear how best to prevent more opioid deaths. And the attorney general’s office messages saying the money can be spent on anything aren’t helpful.

“That’s no guidance whatsoever,” he said. 

Repeating history could doom future crisis response

Dr. Rahul Gupta, the former Office of National Drug Control Policy director, said it should be the responsibility of the state government to encourage local governments how best the dollars can be used to stop the public health overdose crisis.

Fitch’s counterparts in states such as North Carolina and Utah have developed instructions for how these dollars can best be used to prevent more overdoses. Fitch did not answer a question about whether she would consider making a guide like those for the local governments.

“It’s not fair to blame them (localities) for utilizing money in different ways if we’re not providing that overarching guidance to them,” Gupta said. He added that public health bodies such as Johns Hopkins University’s Bloomberg School of Public Health have created helpful national guides for opioid settlement spending.

Only one of the 147 governments, the city of Hattiesburg, indicated that it would seek input from residents who’ve been impacted by addiction to guide how it should use its settlement funds. It reported receiving roughly $54,000 in May.

Mayor Toby Barker said in June he wanted to seek the advice of families who’ve lost loved ones, addiction treatment providers and law enforcement officers of how to best spend its dollars.

“I don’t want us to do something to do something,” he said. “I want to see Hattiesburg make a focused investment on where it can do some good.”

Feinberg, the West Virginia University professor, said community input is the best way to make sure these dollars reduce the overdose death rate. She said other local elected officials may want to look to Hattiesburg as an example of what’s possible, as she thinks it could have the best luck at saving lives.

It’s important that these dollars be spent to prevent more overdose deaths not just for this crisis but also for future ones, Gupta said. The opioid lawsuits were modeled after tobacco cases in the 1990s, and a lot of that money didn’t end up addressing the public health emergency at hand. 

If that happens again, Gupta said, judges could be hesitant to demand response money for the next public health emergency created by corporations.

“It’s going to be very difficult to argue why these are required to abate that crisis,” he said.

Mississippi has been received tens of millions of dollars in opioid settlements each year since 2022, and the use of those dollars has been mostly a mystery. But a Mississippi Today investigation this summer found that of over $124 million the state has received, less than $1 million has been used by public officials to address addiction. Managing editor Kate Royals and mental health reporter Allen Siegler speak with Tricia Christensen, a nationally recognized leader in overdose prevention and opioid settlement spending from Tennessee, about how this compares to other states and what it means for Mississippians harmed by the overdose epidemic.

If you watched Ole Miss out-score Arkansas 41-35 Saturday night, you know this: Rebel quarterback Trinidad Chambliss, a transfer Division II from Ferris (Michigan) State, can play. He is the real deal. He can run. He can throw. He has the “it” factor.

The Ole Miss roster lists Chambliss  at 6-foot-1, and he might be 6 feet tall in his spikes, which is probably why he played first at Ferris State and not at Michigan or Michigan State. But he runs like a halfback, and throws with accuracy and zip. He makes good decisions, and he makes plays. 

Chambliss led Ferris State to the Division II national championship last year throwing for a gazillion yards and running for a zillion more. He produced 51 touchdowns in a single football season, which is crazy good in any league.

But still, it’s a gigantic leap from the Great Lakes Intercollegiate Athletic Conference to the SEC. Chambliss has played before more fans in two SEC games than he did in his entire career at Ferris State, located in Big Rapids, Michigan, in the west central part of the state. The Ferris State stadium is called a field and seats about 6,000, although that many seats are rarely needed.

Chambliss played well in relief duty a week earlier when Ole Miss starter Austin Simmons suffered an ankle injury at Kentucky. Making his first SEC start against Arkansas, he threw for 353 yards and a touchdown and ran 62 yards and two touchdowns. He was, in a word, terrific. Lane Kiffin will have an interesting decision to make when Simmons regains his health. It won’t be easy to sit Chambliss back down.

The guess here is we might see Chambliss set a trend across college football. It wouldn’t surprise me if there aren’t a lot more DII players who make the jump. This much I know: There have been plenty of DII players in the past, some right here in Mississippi, who could have played at the next level. 

Exhibit A would be Josh Bright, the splendid Delta State quarterback, who led the Statesmen to the 2000 DII national championship and won the Conerly Trophy in the process. Bright ran coach Steve Campbell’s option offense to perfection, running and passing for more than 1,000 yards. Asked Sunday whether Bright could have played in the SEC, Campbell, who has since coached at several Division I schools, laughed before answering. “You know he could have, you saw him” Campbell said. “Not a doubt in my mind. He was a no-brainer. All you had to do was watch him.”

But you don’t have to take it from Campbell – or me. Back then, I happened to be working on a book with legendary Ole Miss coach John Vaught, who watched on TV as Bright put up 63 points in the national championship game. Said Vaught of Bright, “He damned sure could have played quarterback for me,”

Said Campbell, “We had some other players who could have played at the highest level. Rico McDonald, a running back on that championship team, could have played anywhere in the country.”

At least two other recent Delta State quarterbacks likely could have played big-time college football. Most recently, Patrick Shegog, almost exactly the same size as Chambliss, threw for 32 touchdowns and only two interceptions in 2023, leading the Statesmen to 10 wins. He, too, won the Conerly.

Scott Eyster, a four-year DSU starting quarterback, was a four-time finalist for the Conerly Trophy, a three-time All-American. He threw for 128 touchdowns in four years. That’s all. Ron Roberts, one of his DSU head coaches, is now the defensive coordinator at Florida and has also coached Baylor and Auburn. I texted Roberts Sunday morning, asking if Eyster could have played at the SEC level. “No doubt,” Roberts answered, and then he mentioned that Seth Adams, who played behind Eyster at DSU and transferred to Hinds Community College, eventually wound up starting at quarterback for Ole Miss.

Eyster, now the principal at Bay High in Bay St. Louis, says he has no regrets about his Delta State career, but knows in his heart he could have played DI football. He said he was contacted by Mississippi State about the possibility of transferring. “But back then, I would have had to sit out a year and there was no NIL money,” Eyster said. “It wasn’t worth it. Plus, I loved Delta State. They were good to me there. I have to admit, I’d be a lot more tempted now that you don’t have to sit out a season when you transfer and there’s all that NIL money.”

Fast Freddie McAfee could have played for anybody, too, when he helped Mississippi College to a DII national championship. Indeed, he did play for five different teams in a 16-year NFL career. Vicksburg native Malcolm Butler played his college football at DII West Alabama, before he became famous for making a Super Bowl-saving interception for the New England Patriots. 

Campbell, the national championship coach of Bright at Delta State, once played on a DII national championship at Troy State. He well remembers blocking a linebacker named Jessie Tuggle, who played at DII Valdosta State, before a long career with the Atlanta Falcons.

“Everybody should remember who Jessie Tuggle was,” Campbell said. “His name is on the stadium in Atlanta. He was a load.”

Tuggle probably was overlooked by the SEC powerhouses because he stood only 5 feet, 11 inches tall, which is still three inches taller than Sam Mills, the linebacker who is in both the New Orleans Saints and Carolina Panthers halls of fame. Mills played his college football at Division III Montclair State.

“Here’s the deal,” Steve Campbell continued. “There are great players at every level of college football, especially at the skill positions. It would not surprise me at all if you see more players moving up a level with NIL and the portal.”