Nora Miller, the president of the Mississippi University for Women, is pushing back on a recommendation from the state Board of Education to relocate the Mississippi School for Math and Science off the campus of MUW to another of the state universities. MSMS, a gifted program for high school juniors and seniors, has been located on the Mississippi University for Women’s campus since its inception. Miller tells Mississippi Today’s Taylor Vance and Candice Wilder why the program is crucial to the city of Columbus and why taxpayers across the state should be concerned with the estimated $80 million cost for relocating the school.

Don’t look for Mississippi to get involved in what appears to be an escalating redistricting war where states redraw their U.S. House districts to aid Republicans or Democrats ahead of a hotly contested 2026 national election.

Mississippi most likely will not engage in the redistricting battle because Republicans already have been helped about as much as possible in the Magnolia State. Here, there are three safe Republican U.S. House districts and one safe Democratic district.

In theory, the Mississippi Legislature could draw the congressional districts in such a manner as to make all four districts favor Republicans. But to do so, Black voters, who generally are more prone to vote Democratic, would have to be diluted to such an extent that the redraw would conflict with long-held federal court rulings.

From a legal standpoint and even from an ethical and moral standpoint, it would be difficult to justify no Black-majority districts in Mississippi, where the non-white population is nearing 40%.

Unsurprisingly, Texas fired the first shot in what is shaping up as a nationwide redistricting battle. The Texas Legislature, at the behest of President Donald Trump, who fears his Republican Party will lose the U.S. House in the 2026 midterm election, is trying to redraw the Longhorn State’s 38 congressional districts to give the Republicans five more seats. They currently have 25.

In California, Gov. Gavin Newsom is threatening to retaliate by creating more Democratic districts. California currently has 43 Democratic districts and nine Republican districts.

There have been rumblings of blue New York and red Florida also going back to the redistricting drawing board to create more seats to help their respective party.

Normally, redistricting is conducted every 10 years after the release of the U.S. Census. The last redistricting occurred after the 2020 U.S. Census. But it should be no surprise that Trump, fearing that Republicans will lose the House in 2026, asked Texas to eschew the norms and conduct a mid-decade redistricting.

Both Democrats and Republicans are guilty of gerrymandering or of drawing districts to benefit their political party. The courts, generally, have said that is OK.

But the courts — at least in the past — have also said their minority populations must be given opportunities to elect candidates of their choice.

While the courts have said gerrymandering is allowed, a recent Economist/YouGov poll found an overwhelming 69% oppose the partisan drawing of districts, compared to only 9% who support it and 22% of respondents who are unsure. A plurality of 35% support states retaliating if another state draws districts to support one particular party. The retaliation is opposed by 30%, while 36% of respondents are unsure.

A plurality also opposes Trump’s call for the FBI to hunt down Texas Democratic lawmakers who have fled the state to prevent the Legislature from having the quorum needed to draw new congressional districts.

For what it’s worth, a study by the Princeton Gerrymandering Project found 15 states with failing grades in terms of non-partisan redistricting. Nine of those states failed because of their strong Republican tilt, while five failed because of strong Democratic leanings. Two — Tennessee and Louisiana — failed because of racial unfairness. Through court rulings, a new Black-majority district has been created in Louisiana since the Princeton study was conducted.

Texas and Florida were among the states receiving failing grades. New York and California were not. Another large Democratic stronghold, Illinois, did get a failing grade.

Mississippi is unique because of its racial makeup and voting patterns. Most white Mississippians vote Republican, but the large Black minority — the largest percentage of Black voters in the nation — tends to vote Democratic.

While Republicans have won all statewide elections since 2016, the elections often are relatively close.

In the latest redistricting, Democrats argued that because of the strong pro-Democratic minority population, one of the three heavily Republican congressional districts should be drawn in a manner to make it more competitive.

But the majority-Republican Legislature rejected that argument. Hence, there is no need for the Republicans in the Mississippi Legislature to undertake redistricting now.

Legendary Mississippi author Greg Iles died Friday after a long battle with cancer.

The 65-year-old best-selling author, who wrote 17 novels, lost his battle to multiple myeloma, a cancer in which white blood cells begin to grow abnormally in the bone marrow. He had been battling the disease since 1996.

“He gave us great books, and he stayed in Mississippi,” said Lemuria Bookstore owner John Evans. “He wrote about a lot of the wrongs to make people all over the country realize that some people were trying to do right.”

Iles became a supporter of Lemuria long before he ever began writing books, coming first with his father and later on his own, Evans said.

Once on Ernest Hemingway’s birthday, Lemuria had a keg of beer and threw a party.

When Iles arrived, he confessed that he felt “totally at home in this bookstore,” Evans said. “He was just a kid.”

He pursued a career in rock music, but traded it for love and a life of writing novels. His first novel, “Spandau Phoenix,” a 1993 book that involved one of the unsolved mysteries of World War II, became a national success.

Iles soon became a New York Times best-selling author, blending real-life history with his spellbinding tales.

In 2011, he faced his own life-or-death crisis when he was nearly killed in an accident on U.S. 61. His right leg below the knee had to be amputated, but Iles never gave up.

During his convalescence, he began writing a trilogy set in his beloved Natchez based on a Ku Klux Klan group known as the Silver Dollar Group, which was involved in the fatal firebombing of Frank Morris, a Black shoe repairman in Ferriday, Louisiana, in 1964 as well as others.

Iles based one of the characters, Henry Sexton, on real-life investigative reporter Stanley Nelson, who wrote about Morris’ killing and other Klan violence.

Nelson, who died June 5, was flattered that Iles penned such a character, but the journalist confessed that his alter ego “has had a much more adventurous life than me. He is a musician, has a girlfriend and is tech savvy — that’s something I don’t know a damn thing about.”

After he finished the trilogy in 2017, he appeared with Nelson at the Mississippi Book Festival, an event he did his best to champion.

The festival’s executive director, Ellen Rodgers Daniels, greeted Friday’s news with sorrow. “He was such a huge part of the festival,” she said. “I’m heartbroken for [his wife] Caroline and the children.”

Despite his national success, Iles continued to sign books and host events at Lemuria. He held the last of those events at Cathead Distillery in Jackson, where he sat in a wheelchair as he talked about his last novel, “Southern Man,” which author Stephen King called “his latest and best.” 

Ever since Evans learned the news Friday night, he said he’s been thinking about Iles and other authors who have left us too soon. “I’ve seen so many of my Mississippi friends go away,” he said. “It makes me sad, and it makes me think of others, too.”

In one of the last posts on his website, Iles wrote, “My last thought for today is that only two things matter: family and friends.”

Nearly 2,000 families may be without child care at the start of this school year after dozens of child care centers run by Mississippi Action for Progress in northern Mississippi have not reopened after losing their federal funding.

Mississippi Action for Progress Inc., an administrator of Head Start pre-kindergarten centers, has lost funding to run its northern district centers – of which there are 28 listed on the group’s website – after the federal Administration for Children and Families found multiple deficiencies in MAP’s operations, including the group’s failure to report sexual abuse at one of its centers. MAP’s tax disclosures in 2024 showed that its revenue of $78,850,872 came entirely from government grants. 

Head Start is a federal program that, for 60 years, has provided early education and child care to low-income families with children younger than 5. Mississippi is one of a few states where Head Start is available in every county.

While the contract to administer those centers has recently been given to other nonprofits, parents of Head Start children and employees of MAP say they never received any formal communication from the organizations, leading to mass confusion and uncertainty, with questions from parents and teachers flooding Facebook. 

“In the coming weeks, the Office of Head Start will implement a plan to transition Early Head Start and Head Start operations to the leadership of these new grant awardees. This plan includes ensuring Head Start services for families who are expected to return in the fall,” the federal Office of Head Start told Mississippi Today. 

A letter reviewed by Mississippi Today that was sent by MAP Executive Director Bobby Brown to some employees on Friday said the Office of Head Start had asked MAP to provide “temporary, limited services” until “all locations have been transitioned to their new agencies.” While Brown said the temporary services would come with “some limitations and lower enrollment,” the letter did not provide clarity on the number of students who could be enrolled this year, or the number of teachers and staff MAP would retain, besides saying that “identified staff” would return on Tuesday for training and to prepare the centers.  

Despite repeated requests from Mississippi Today, representatives of MAP did not provide the number of students or workers they would retain. 

Mississippi Action for Progress was founded in 1966 with a biracial group of board members including civil rights activist Aaron Henry, who served as president of the Mississippi state conference of the NAACP, and Hodding Carter III, a Pulitzer Prize-winning newspaper publisher and journalist in Greenville. It was one of the earliest organizations in the state to have local Black leadership shape how federal dollars were spent. 

In the early years of the organization, Mississippi’s local government vetoed the spending of federal money and state officials threatened workers. Brown, who most recently drew a salary of $203,167 from the organization, has served as chief executive officer of MAP since at least 2001. He did not respond to repeated requests for comment. 

Scrambling to find child care

For parents and grandparents in north Mississippi, the loss of Head Start came at the worst time: the beginning of the school year. For caregivers, it sometimes has meant calling up day cares in neighboring towns.

“It was sort of a shock for everybody,” said Sheila Summerford, whose granddaughter was set to attend Head Start this month in Fulton.

She had to scramble to find a new day care. Even though Head Start is the best value option, Summerford says she was able to find room at a new day care near the flower store she owns off Main Street. Many centers were already full.

“Everybody’s kids that go there was pretty much just waiting on a start date. And then, I found out through Facebook that they’re not opening yet,” said Sabrina Celeste, mother of a 5-year-old who was also set to attend Head Start this year. 

“And then it was going around that they wasn’t even going to open. And then now somebody got on there and updated everybody, saying that some more companies had took over, but it’s not MAP anymore,” she said. Celeste and her husband have since been taking their daughter to work with them. “Gotta do what you gotta do.”

It’s not clear when the federal Office of Head Start notified MAP that it had not been awarded funding for the northern district. When Mississippi Today reporters visited MAP’s Jackson office Thursday, Ashley Nichols, MAP’s director of community development, said she could not remember the date of notification. 

No one else from MAP’s Jackson office could be reached in person or by phone or email. 

A federal monitoring review of MAP Head Start centers conducted in June 2023 found multiple deficiencies, including negative behaviors demonstrated by MAP staff “causing children to be afraid to attend the center and regress developmentally,” not following appropriate strategies to support children’s independence and individual needs around toileting, and the organization’s failure to report allegations of sexual assault to the Office of Head Start in a timely manner.

Because of the deficiencies, the Office of Head Start notified MAP in 2024 that it would need to re-compete for funding for the 2025 school year. 

Mississippi Today on Friday filed a public records request for all reports regarding MAP Head Starts in the northern district. 

“They should at least send out a text message or something, instead of people finding out through Facebook,” Celeste said. 

“I don’t know what’s going on.”

Kala Holt worked for 16 years for Head Start in Fulton. For the last week, she has called MAP’s Human Resources department, and has been sent to voicemail each time. She was hoping to secure her retirement money.

“I feel like my 16 years are gone. I’m not even sure I want to teach anymore,” she said. “My babies are my babies. I loved what I did. I loved the smile on their faces and the joy that came over them when they learned something new.”

This month, her husband had to ask his aunt for help paying their electricity bill. She said her health insurance is set to expire this month, and that she was focused on securing her retirement money, but when she called the firm, she said it redirected her to MAP’s HR department that ghosted her for a week.

“The unknown of not having a job is very, very stressful,” she said.

Ten employees of MAP Head Start centers told Mississippi Today they found out about the closures through social media and are struggling to find alternative employment, all the while dealing with a lack of communication from their superiors and MAP management. 

“I called down there, left voicemails, they haven’t returned my calls,” said a teacher who asked to remain anonymous for fear of retaliation. 

Holt was expecting to come back to classes in mid August after three days of training in Jackson, like every other year. But no announcement came by the end of July about when class would resume. To this day, Holt hasn’t received any official word from MAP.

“A lot of us want to reapply for the job,” Holt said. “When can we reapply?”

Teachers who spent years at local Head Start centers were disappointed about the change. 

“It’s a messed up situation. I don’t know what’s going on. I put my heart in what I’m doing. The truth is, it’s tough when children don’t know, too,” said Jerry Smith, who was a Head Start teacher for 19 years in Tupelo.

Lately, he’s been helping out after school part time in Lee County. He’s still waiting to hear back on a start date for Head Start.

Longtime employees said they could not get in touch with the same MAP supervisors they would call monthly for check-ups. Some were unsure if they were still MAP employees.

For one pregnant employee who wished to remain anonymous while she navigated the job search process, optimism has turned to dread. She feels her pregnancy has hurt her employment chances. As a single mother, she needs the work.

Another former employee already took another job with a public school.

An employee and mother of two who recently got her associate’s degree in early childhood education found out through Facebook that the Head Start center where she worked for two years shut down and has not been able to find a new job. 

“I picked teaching, and I’m thinking I went to the wrong career,” she said.

“Any other place that I’ve ever worked, there’s an exit method set up for a smooth transition. But it was just like we went to the edge and they just pushed us over,” said another teacher who worked at her MAP Head Start center for six years.  

What’s next?

Federal funds have been allocated to four organizations to run the MAP centers that are closing, according to the Administration for Children and Families, which houses the Office of Head Start. 

Those organizations – Delta Health Alliance, Five County Child Development, Mississippi State University and Pearl River Valley Opportunity – have also been kept in the dark. 

Delta Health Alliance received its award letter Thursday, the day after the federal Office of Head Start told Mississippi Today that the group was a grantee. 

“The notification was back dated to Aug. 1,” said Rickey Lawson, communications coordinator for Delta Health Alliance. 

The organization is working quickly to offer Head Start and Early Head Start programs in Lee, Itawamba, Pontotoc and Union counties – where 465 children were previously enrolled in MAP Head Start Centers, Lawson said. 

The other three grantees did not respond to multiple requests for comment from Mississippi Today. 

U.S. Rep. Bennie Thompson, a Democrat, told Mississippi Today he is monitoring the situation and wants to make sure the transition is seamless for families. 

“Normally, when an agency has trouble, they will contact my office for assistance, but for whatever reason once I was made aware of MAP’s situation, the decision had already been reached to put it out for competition,” Thompson said. “So my effort now is to make sure that those families and employees formerly affiliated with MAP would be given the same consideration for the new agency.”

Memorial Hospital Biloxi will stop offering labor and delivery services as of Sept.1 – a change that comes seven months after Memorial Health System bought the hospital from Merit Health with intentions to expand services, including OB-GYN care. 

The Biloxi hospital will still offer gynecological services, but patients will have to go to Memorial Hospital in Gulfport or another nearby hospital to give birth.

Kent Nicaud, president and CEO of the hospital system, said his team has prepared for this transition and expects no delays in care or extended wait times at the Gulfport hospital. 

“We have recently added several new providers, including physicians and OBs, to support our growth,” Nicaud told Mississippi Today. “These resources ensure there will be no access issues or delays, and every expectant mother will receive the highest standard of care in the region.”

Both hospitals accept the same insurance, Nicaud confirmed. 

Expectant mothers who are currently patients at Biloxi have been informed about the transition, their delivery options and enhanced services at Gulfport. The two hospitals are about 15 miles apart.

The Gulfport hospital is home to Mississippi Gulf Coast’s only Level III neonatal intensive care unit. Level III is equipped to deal with babies who are born earlier than 32 weeks or who have critical illnesses. 

The availability of obstetrics care has been declining for over a decade, with labor and delivery units shuttering across the U.S., particularly in rural areas. Obstetrics is one of the most expensive services hospitals provide. 

Nicaud said this move is intended to improve efficiency, citing Gulfport’s NICU, OB emergency department and 24/7 laborist program. 

“We’re consolidating obstetrics services to give every expectant mother access to all of the region’s most advanced maternity resources in one place,” he said. “This unified approach ensures high-quality and coordinated care from pregnancy through delivery and beyond.”

The following hospitals offer labor and delivery services in Mississippi’s six southernmost counties, according to the Mississippi State Department of Health: 

• Memorial Hospital Gulfport
• Singing River Hospital Ocean Springs
• Singing River Hospital Pascagoula
• George Regional Hospital, Lucedale
• Highland Community Hospital, Picayune
• Keesler Medical Center, Biloxi.

A note from Adam Ganucheau: A couple hours after this column published, Sen. Roger Wicker’s office reached out and demanded a correction, saying the senator’s “get a life” comment was directed to himself and not to constituents. That’s certainly not how I nor hundreds of Mississippians who commented on and shared the viral video heard it. Mississippi Today has updated portions of this column to reflect concerns raised by Wicker’s office. Here’s a link to the video/audio of his response to the question about constituent concerns. Mississippians can decide for themselves what Wicker meant.

When 34-year-old Thad Cochran arrived in Washington after his first election in 1972, the Republican felt it important to document what he’d heard and learned from Mississippians on the campaign trail and share it with his young staff.

He sat down at a typewriter and wrote a memo titled “General Responsiveness” and dated March 14, 1973:

During the campaign I detected a very strong animosity among the people toward government and those associated with government bureaus and agencies. This included elected officials and those associated with them. Part of the cause of this attitude was due to a lack of feeling or understanding by government people for the needs and opinions of the average citizen. We are all in a job to represent all our constituents. We are not the bureaucracy. A constituent who asks us for help should be assured to be in need of help with our office as his last resort. A constituent who writes a letter should be made to feel by our response that he is glad he wrote us. A constituent who claims to have been wronged by the government should be assumed to be correct. Everyone should guard against developing the attitude that we are better than, smarter than or more important than any constituent. We do not hold a position of authority over any constituent. We are truly servants of the people who selected us for this job.

Every year from 1973 through 2018, over his three U.S. House terms and six U.S. Senate terms, Cochran shared that memo with every staffer who worked in his offices. The guidance, he said all those years, was a necessary reminder to show respect to the people who offer feedback or need help. He never wanted his staff or himself to forget who sent them to Washington.

The memo, like so many other things, serves as a stark reminder that Cochran was among the last in a bygone era of American politics. The perspective he wrote and shared is a far cry from what Mississippians have been getting recently from our current U.S. senators.

“Surely everybody else has better things to do with their time,” senior U.S. Sen. Roger Wicker said to a room full of constituents earlier this month when asked about calls and emails his office has been getting. After half-heartedly explaining that he does see a list of names of people who reach out to his office, he quipped: “Get a life.”

Wicker’s office said Friday that the senator directed “Get a life” to himself, not to constituents.

Wicker, who typically chooses his words a little more carefully, perhaps has been trying to match his junior colleague’s energy.

“Why is everyone’s head exploding?” U.S. Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith said in April to Mississippi constituents who had expressed concerns over slashing federal Medicaid spending. “I can’t understand why everyone’s head is exploding.”

There are many kind staffers working for Republicans Wicker and Hyde-Smith who are helpful to Mississippi constituents in any number of ways privately or behind the scenes. These people care deeply about serving their home state and they do it well, and they cannot help how their bosses address the public. But, boy, their phones must be blowing up more than ever since the senators made these comments.

Consider, for a moment, what it means that we have devolved from having a leader who believed that “a constituent who claims to have been wronged by the government should be assumed to be correct” to one who thinks telling constituents to “get a life” is appropriate. Think about the fact that we replaced a leader who regularly reminded his staff that “we are truly servants of the people who selected us for this job” with one whose gut response to legitimate concerns from constituents is that their “heads are exploding.”

Just … wow. To call it alarming doesn’t fully encapsulate the gravity of their behavior. It’s enough to discourage even the most optimistic among us about the present and future of our state and our nation.

It’s enough to inspire you to ponder, in this intense political climate when unprecedented and harrowing federal government decisions are being made and going largely unchecked every day, whether our current U.S. senators even remember why they’re in Washington, why we sent them there.

It is necessary, in the shortest possible order, to ask and answer for ourselves what we should expect of our elected officials and whether we should feel OK about being dismissed or ignored outright like this.

You don’t have to be a Democrat to think that this behavior is out of line. Plenty of Republicans — some publicly and many privately — are increasingly disturbed by what’s happening in Washington. Regardless of your own personal political beliefs, be honest with yourself about whether you can read these comments from our senators and still feel that your best interests are being represented.

Sadly, we can no longer ask Cochran to help us answer these questions, but it sure seems clear where he’d stand. What about you?

READ MORE: Mississippi, where ‘We Dissent’ means nothing to elected officials

More than 380 students on financial aid at Jackson State University have signed a petition calling on Denise Jones-Gregory, the interim president, and the university’s housing and residence life office to “address an unfair housing crisis” as they scramble to find lodging just days before classes begin. 

Arianna Thomas, who identified herself on the change.org site as a Jackson native and honors elementary education scholar, created the petition Wednesday. She could not be reach for comment.

Students who applied for dorms and financial aid in the spring were removed from their housing assignments without warning, according to the change.org petition. Some were told they were rejected because of unpaid balances or their aid wasn’t applied correctly or delayed. 

As a result, students said they are now left without housing, placed on waiting lists or reassigned to more expensive campus lodging and meal plans costing $3,000 or more. Students said no clear answers have been provided by university officials to address the matter, according to the petition. 

When reached for comment via email by Mississippi Today, university officials said they were aware of the petition and working to address the issue.

“Jackson State University understands the importance of stable housing to our students. We are working directly with students who still need placement, including partner housing that offers shuttle service, security and daily support,” Anthony Howard, media relations specialist with the university, said in an email statement. “While each student’s situation is unique, our Housing and Residence Life team and university partners are also assisting students with cost concerns to ensure they have the resources they need.”

Commenting on the change.org site, Naheeme, a student from Bronx, New York, said, “They have terrible communication when it comes to housing and they makes problems for family’s because that disrupts people money due to not having them having overly expensive housing it’s just not acceptable for a school as good as Jackson State.”

“Students should be provided the housing they paid and waited for,” a student from Houston named Rhylin commented.

“Students need the housing they apply for. Stop prioritizing students that you don’t know will stay over returning students who need housing to continue their education. Graduation rates will surely drop,” said Deona, a student from Jackson.

Last year, former university president Marcus Thompson unsuccessfully pitched a $5 million plan to Mississippi’s college governing board to purchase the Jackson Marriott as a temporary solution to a housing crisis as the school experienced increasing student enrollment in the past years. 

Thompson, who prioritized the issue during his tenure, told board members the school had received roughly 800 more housing applications than it had to accommodate when the campus only had 2,000 available beds. 

For years, the state’s largest HBCU has been trying to secure funding to fix its housing shortage through state legislative support. 

For the 2025-26 academic year, the school leased 106 rooms at the Holiday Inn Express & Suites in downtown Jackson for $2.1 million, providing housing for 200 students according to Mississippi Institutions of Higher Learning board meeting minutes. The state college governing board approved of the leasing agreement during a July 31 special called meeting. 

Alcorn State University, the state’s oldest land grant university and an HBCU, is also experiencing a housing crunch as dozens of students will be spending their first semester rooming at Magnolia Bluffs Casino Hotel of Natchez, which is owned by Magnolia Bluffs Casino, according to the IHL board’s meeting minutes from a July 18 special session. 

The hotel is approximately 40 miles from the university’s main campus in Lorman. About 100 students will be housed in 50 rooms at the hotel, which is 1 mile away from the casino. Two additional rooms will provide lodging for administrative staff as oversight as Robinson and Burrus Hall, a residence on campus remains offline for repairs. These projects are funded through Higher Education Emergency Relief Funds, which are set to expire next year.

Transportation services will be provided to students, John Pearce, senior associate commissioner of the IHL explained, during the session.

WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court on Thursday refused for now to block enforcement of a Mississippi law aimed at regulating the use of social media by children, an issue of growing national concern.

The justices rejected an emergency appeal from a tech industry group, NetChoice, that is challenging laws passed in Mississippi and other states that require social media users to verify their ages. The court had been asked to keep the law on hold while a lawsuit plays out.

There were no noted dissents from the brief, unsigned order. But Justice Brett Kavanaugh wrote to say that NetChoice could eventually succeed in showing that the law is indeed unconstitutional.

Kavanaugh said he nevertheless agreed with the court’s decision because the tech group had not shown it would suffer legal harm if the measure went into effect as the lawsuit unfolded.

NetChoice argues that the Mississippi law threatens privacy rights and unconstitutionally restricts the free expression of users of all ages.

A federal judge agreed and prevented the 2024 law from taking effect. But a three-judge panel of the 5th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals ruled in July that the law could be enforced while the lawsuit proceeds.

It’s the latest legal development as court challenges play out against similar laws in states across the country.

Parents and even some teenagers are growing increasingly concerned about the effects of social media use on young people. Supporters of the new laws have said they are needed to help curb the explosive use of social media among young people, and what researchers say is an associated increase in depression and anxiety.

Mississippi Attorney General Lynn Fitch told the justices that age verification could help protect young people from “sexual abuse, trafficking, physical violence, sextortion, and more,” activities that Fitch noted are not protected by the First Amendment.

NetChoice represents some of the country’s most high-profile technology companies, including Google, which owns YouTube; Snap Inc., the parent company of Snapchat; and Meta, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram.

NetChoice has filed similar lawsuits in Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Ohio and Utah.

Mark Sherman and Lindsay Whitehurst of The Associated Press reported from Washington.