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Former WWE wrestler Ted “Teddy” DiBiase Jr. was sitting on the front row behind former Mississippi welfare director John Davis while the now disgraced government bureaucrat testified before Congress in 2019.

Davis, who was at the time admittedly orchestrating a stunning welfare fraud scheme, was telling members of the U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Agriculture about the supposedly life changing work his department was conducting instead of making food assistance available to more Mississippians.

“We know that it takes investment in our staff through things like Law of 16,” Davis told congress members, “which is our personal and professional development programs for our staff members, to then replicate that over with our clients to make sure that they are empowered to be whom they have been called to be.”

Law of 16 was DiBiase Jr.’s nebulous motivational speaking series, one of the projects for which he received roughly $3 million in federal welfare funds from Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) and The Emergency Food Assistance Program.

Today, nearly four years after the director spoke openly in the nation’s capital about his work, DiBiase Jr. is facing criminal charges for the first time within the larger unfolding welfare scandal, in which officials stole or misspent tens of millions of federal public assistance funds. 

He pleaded not guilty and if convicted on all counts in the indictment unsealed Thursday, DiBiase Jr. faces a maximum penalty of up to 175 years in prison.

“It was the government that chose to run this program this way. And it was not a secret. This was done in front of everybody. It was done in front of the United States Congress. This was not a secret. This was not, as the federal law would say, a scheme or artifice to defraud,” Scott Gilbert, DiBiase Jr.’s criminal defense attorney, told Mississippi Today two weeks ago. “So what we’re doing now, for the most part, is second guessing and armchair quarterbacking the way government was run. And that’s not what the criminal law is for.”

This indictment, handed down by a federal grand jury, is the first that the U.S. Attorney’s Office has secured in the welfare case. Each of the other five federal defendants pleaded guilty to bills of information, which are used when a defendant chooses to plead guilty without the case going to a grand jury.

READ MORE: The Backchannel Series

DiBiase Jr. joins his younger brother Brett DiBiase, who also received hundreds of thousands in welfare funds, to become the eighth person to be charged criminally within the scandal, including those only charged in state court. DiBiase Jr., his brother and their father, former WWE star Ted “The Million Dollar Man” DiBiase, are all facing civil charges in a parallel lawsuit Mississippi Department of Human Services has filed against nearly four dozen people or organizations. DiBiase Sr. has not faced criminal charges.

Under the new indictment, DiBiase Jr. faces 13 criminal counts under Title 18 of the U.S. Code, the main criminal code of the federal government, ranging from conspiracy, wire fraud, theft of federal funds and money laundering.

“It’s ironic that he was involved with the Law of 16, a questionable program at best, because he’s now going to get familiar with the Law of 18, which is Title 18 of the U.S. Code,” quipped current Mississippi Department of Human Services Director Bob Anderson, a former prosecutor tapped by Gov. Tate Reeves to lead the welfare agency after the scandal broke in 2020.

Anderson has said he is cooperating with the federal authorities in their ongoing investigation for his entire tenure at MDHS. 

“I believe they will do everything to bring all additional charges they think are appropriate in this case,” he added after DiBiase Jr.’s arraignment Thursday.

Prosecutors say DiBiase Jr. secured at least five “sham contracts” in 2017 and 2018 with two nonprofits, Mississippi Community Education Center and Family Resource Center of North Mississippi, who were receiving tens of millions of federal welfare funds to run a statewide anti-poverty initiative called Families First for Mississippi. The directors of those nonprofits, Nancy New and Christie Webb, have both pleaded guilty within the scheme.

Davis and DiBiase Jr. met after the director initially hired his younger brother, Brett DiBiase, in an executive level position at MDHS in 2017, despite him lacking qualifications for the job. Davis became close with the DiBiase brothers, first Brett and then Teddy. Their communication reflects a familial relationship in which they discussed their faith, hardships, and told each other, “I love you.”

Davis retired from office in mid-2019, shortly after the D.C. trip, after his deputy, Jacob Black, who is facing his own charges in the parallel civil suit, brought a tip of suspected fraud to former Gov. Phil Bryant. In the months leading up to his ousting, Davis expressed concern that his relationship with DiBiase Jr. had weakened.

“I hate that you feel that way,” DiBiase Jr. wrote to Davis in a March 2019 text message. “… You definitely don’t have to ‘chase’ after me … Just want you to know I love you dearly, and I’m so grateful for your friendship.”

In its civil suit, MDHS alleges DiBiase Jr. “exploited his close relationship with John Davis to further enrich his family and friends.”

Under Davis’ direction, the nonprofits made up front payments to DiBiase Jr. “regardless of whether any work had been performed and knowing that no work likely ever would be performed,” the new indictment alleges.

The nonprofits hired DiBiase Jr. to perform vague services — such as leadership outreach, addressing the needs of inner city youth and assessing the need for emergency food assistance — with little requirement of outcomes.

But according to audit reports, interviews and a review of communication, Davis frequently required DiBiase Jr. to accompany him in his day-to-day executive meetings and tasks, interrupting DiBiase Jr.’s duties under the contract.

“It’s just sort of bizarre to think of the executive director of the Department of Human Services actually conducting himself on a regular basis in ways that thwart and interfere with the ability of the contractor to do the work. But that’s exactly what went on, on a regular basis,” Gilbert said.

“You’ve got a guy who’s here that’s trying to perform and do what he’s supposed to do, and to a large extent he does,” Gilbert said. “And then you’ve got this person running MDHS that for whatever reason feels like the best use of Teddy’s time is not to perform his contracts, but to follow him around to meetings and to other events and things like that. And it just, it’s nonsensical. … I don’t know of anybody that understands really what that was about other than just, it’s just pure absurdity.”

The indictment alleges that the money that went to DiBiase Jr. “were diverted from needy families and low-income individuals in Mississippi.”

However, states have long legally diverted funds from the national Temporary Assistance for Needy Families program away from families in need. Since welfare reform in the 90’s, when TANF was created, states have used the lax guidelines in federal statute to shrink the side of the program that provides monthly cash assistance, known as the welfare check, and put the money instead into other programs or pet projects. 

Even today, Mississippi’s welfare agency uses only about 5% of its TANF block grant on the welfare check. 

While the other TANF programs are supposed to serve one of three other goals — promoting job preparation and marriage, preventing out-of-wedlock pregnancies and encouraging two-parent families — the federal government provides virtually no oversight to ensure that the programs supported by these funds actually correspond with these goals.

In the case of the Mississippi welfare scandal, which involves officials using $5 million in TANF funds to build a volleyball stadium at University of Southern Mississippi, the spending had become especially egregious.

The indictment alleges DiBiase Jr. used the federal funds he received to buy himself a vehicle and a boat and to put a down payment on a roughly $1.5 million lakeside home in the Madison community of Reunion, which the federal government has since seized.

Gilbert is confident the federal government doesn’t have a viable case against his client. He says there are several problems with the prosecution’s legal theory. In the welfare fraud case, prosecutors have used a specific theft or bribery statute, 18 U.S. Code § 666, which applies to agents of an organization or agency that receives federal funds obtaining funding by fraud. Two of DiBiase Jr.’s 13 counts fall under this statute. Gilbert said his client cannot be charged with this crime since he was not an agent of an organization that received federal funds. He makes the distinction that because DiBiase Jr. was a contractor under the nonprofit, not the state agency, he was never an agent of the federal funds.

Gilbert also contests the government’s claim that DiBiase Jr.’s contracts were a “sham.” DiBiase Jr. did conduct work under the contracts, Gilbert said, and any work he did not conduct was as a result of Davis’ interference.

“The big issue from a criminal defense perspective is: Did someone obtain money or property from the government by being dishonest? And what I can tell you in this case is, these contracts, the work that was done, I’ve yet to see a single shred of evidence that would show that Teddy DiBiase was dishonest with anybody about anything in order to get these contracts. These contracts were awarded to him. They came to him. He didn’t solicit anything from MDHS. He undertook these contracts and attempted to perform the work.”

“So what this boils down to is do people feel like this was an appropriate use of TANF money or other money to carry out the function of government?” Gilbert continued. “That’s a fair question, and that’s a question that reasonable people absolutely can disagree about. But it’s not a crime. You resolve your dissatisfaction with the way the government functions at the polling place.”

The post WWE wrestler fights new federal indictment in welfare scandal, which his attorney calls ‘armchair quarterbacking’ appeared first on Mississippi Today.

Mississippi Today and Open Campus Higher Education Reporter Molly Minta is a finalist for this year’s National Awards for Education Reporting.

The annual awards administered by the Education Writers Association recognize the best education reporting in newsrooms big and small across the nation. Minta is one of three finalists in the small newsroom division of the features category, which honors excellence in human-interest reporting and presentation. 

Her story, “Inside Mississippi’s only class on critical race theory,” started with a tip from a reader. Brittany Murphree, a conservative student in the state’s only class on critical race theory at the University of Mississippi School of Law, wrote a letter urging lawmakers not to ban CRT. She sent her letter to Mississippi Today at the advice of her classmate, Teresa Jones. 

After Molly spent hours on the phone with both students, she realized the story was bigger than the class itself and more about how academic freedom and intellectual inquiry led two Mississippians to a deeper understanding of the state they’d grown up with. 

“I’m honored to be recognized for my reporting alongside journalists whose work I’ve read for years,” Minta said. “I wrote this story for Mississippians in an attempt to show what actually learning critical race theory looks like, but it’s been gratifying to see how the experiences of the two students who shared their stories with me has resonated outside our state.”

Before Mississippi Today published Molly’s story in February 2022, most local and national coverage of critical race theory had focused on three themes: The conservative actors behind the efforts to ban the theory, simply reporting a definition to readers of what the theory actually is, or the fact that it was not taught in K-12 public schools. Molly’s story took readers beyond that paradigm and into a college classroom where students were actually learning the theory. 

“I remember first reading this story and thinking “Finally! Someone actually talked to students in a CRT class.”” Minta’s story sparked conversation and debate not just with readers but with journalists too,” one of the judges wrote of Minta’s story. “After publishing, I know first hand that this story influenced CRT reporting a lot and that alone makes this story particularly innovative.”

Mississippi Today Community Health Reporter Devna Bose is also a finalist in the collaborations category for her work on a series titled Tackling Teacher Shortages she contributed to while at the Post & Courier in South Carolina.

Winners will be announced June 2 during the Education Writers Association National Seminar in Atlanta.

The post Mississippi Today’s Molly Minta named a finalist for national education reporting award appeared first on Mississippi Today.

The new president of Delta State University was appointed with a split vote by the Institutions of Higher Learning Board of Trustees, a rare occurrence from the governing board that typically projects an organized, unified front. 

Daniel Ennis, the longtime South Carolina educator who will take the reins at Delta State in June, was even shot down by Teresa Hubbard, the board’s only DSU alumnus and the trustee who led the presidential search committee. The vote was 7-4 with one trustee absent, according to board meeting minutes. 

But Hubbard and other trustees who opposed Ennis did not want to elaborate on why at IHL’s regular board meeting on Thursday. 

READ MORE: IHL names Daniel J. Ennis next president of Delta State

“No, I’m not gonna do that,” said Trustee Chip Morgan, a retired executive vice president of Delta Council, when asked to comment. “It’s a personnel matter. I’m very supportive of making certain that he is very successful.”

Trustee Gregg Rader declined a request for comment, and Trustee Jeanne Luckey could not be reached because she attended the board meeting virtually. 

Hubbard, who introduced Ennis to campus earlier this month with a complimentary speech, said he has her “complete support.” But she wouldn’t speak to what, if anything, led her to become publicly supportive of Ennis since her no-vote during executive session in late March. 

“We were fortunate in having a tremendous number of qualified candidates,” Hubbard told Mississippi Today. “I felt that way from the beginning. I just think we had a large pool of very qualified candidates, and it was a very difficult decision because there were so many strong candidates for the position.” 

Ennis was one of 59 applicants, six semi-finalists and two finalists, according to an IHL spokesperson. The board undertook a national search to fill the role at Delta State, a regional college in the Mississippi Delta, with the support of Academic Search, an executive headhunting firm. 

He will make $320,000, a slight bump over the $300,000-salary that the current interim president, E.E. “Butch” Caston, is making. Hubbard and Morgan did not attend a special-called meeting, held four days after they did not vote to approve Ennis, that was held to discuss his future salary and moving expenses, according to board meeting minutes. 

As to whether the other finalist was a Delta State alumnus, Hubbard said “that’s one of the things we don’t discuss.”

At the IHL meeting, Caston thanked the trustees for appointing Ennis and said that Delta State is looking forward to him. 

“The excitement on campus and in the community is out the top,” Caston said, “I can speak to the board: Job well done.” 

The community at Delta State was split on if the next president should be a graduate. Ennis’ hiring is also unusual for IHL because he is not an alumnus. In recent years, IHL has made it an increasing priority to hire graduates of its universities. Ennis is the first non-alumnus the board has selected for president since 2017. 

Ennis will be the sole president who was not unanimously appointed by trustees, according to board meeting minutes. 

Last fall, trustees unanimously voted to suspend the search for president at the University of Southern Mississippi and elevate Joe Paul, then the interim president, to a permanent post. Trustees also unanimously appointed Thomas Hudson, the recently resigned president of Jackson State University. Even University of Mississippi Chancellor Glenn Boyce, whose selection sparked protests on campus, was unanimously appointed. 

In a text, Ennis did not say if he had any insight to share into the trustees’ unusual split vote but wrote that “IHL has been tremendously supportive since I was named DSU’s next president.” 

“I’m coming from South Carolina,” he texted. “Around here you can’t get twelve people to agree on whether the evening meal is called ‘dinner’ or ‘supper.’” 

“Perhaps the headline for your article should be ‘So musical a discord’ — a line from my favorite play,” he added. “Shakespeare himself knew that unanimity wasn’t terribly interesting.” 

The post In rare occurrence, IHL did not unanimously vote for new Delta State president  appeared first on Mississippi Today.

A 19-year-old farmworker from South Africa suffocated to death in a Delta farm’s grain bin last year because of his employer’s negligence, according to a report and citations from the U.S. Department of Labor. 

The teenager was working at Bare Bones Farms in Greenwood on an H-2A visa. A Mississippi Today investigation last year found farms across the Delta are increasingly relying upon white foreign workers from South Africa to work their fields through the visa program. 

READ MORE: White Delta farm owners are underpaying and pushing out Black workers

The farm was issued a $90,000 fine this week following a federal investigation.

“Well-known safety standards that protect people from the grave dangers of working in grain bins have been in place for decades, and yet Bare Bones Farms jeopardized the lives of its employees by ignoring federal regulations,” said Courtney Bohanno, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration’s (OSHA) Mississippi director, in a statement. “As a result, the life of a young man who traveled more than 8,500 miles to work in the U.S. ended tragically.”

Bare Bones Farm, which grows soybeans, is owned by Dr. Joseph “Asa” Bennett, an orthopedic surgeon based in LeFlore County. Bennett did not immediately respond to a request for comment Thursday.

In October 2022, the teen, two coworkers and their supervisor climbed into a grain storage bin in efforts to unclog it, according to OSHA. The teen entered the bin first. The group was engulfed in seconds. Emergency responders had to cut a hole in the bin to free the men trapped inside. 

All but one was a visa worker from South Africa. Three of them survived, but it took first responders five hours to recover the body of the 19-year-old. 

Department of Labor inspectors found that the Greenwood farm “willfully violated federal law by failing to ensure that the employees wore full body harnesses connected to a lifeline while inside the soybean bin, which exposed them to deadly engulfment hazards.” 

OSHA investigators found employees were not properly trained on general safety precautions for bin entry. Workers should have turned off equipment before ever entering. 

Investigators with OSHA and the labor department fined Bare Bone for several violations, including not having a written respiratory protection program for employees required to wear respirators; and not providing a medical evaluations or fit test or training for workers required to wear respirators as they loaded and unloaded soybeans. 

OSHA outlines clear safety plans for workers entering grain bins — usually massive metal silos with peaked roofs — since 1988. 

In 2021, 38% of the grain engulfment incidents reported to OSHA turned deadly because employers failed to follow required safeguards, according to the labor department. 

Bare Bones Farm requested 11 foreign workers for the 2022 season, according to disclosure documents posted by the Department of Labor. 

Among the job qualifications, the job posting listed three months of experience, the ability to obtain a driver’s license and basic literacy and math skills. An average work week was expected to be at least 60 hours. 

Bare Bones had requested nine workers the previous season. Both times, it used agents known for finding young, white white men from South Africa on behalf of farm owners.

In last year’s investigation, Mississippi Today found Delta farm owners would often pay the white foreign workers a higher salary than their local counterparts, who were most often Black men.

Local farm workers told Mississippi Today at that time they were charged with training the South Africans, who they said came from farming backgrounds without the massive equipment and safety hazards common on the average Mississippi farm. 

Department of Labor documents show that Bare Bones Farms did not request any foreign workers for the 2023 farming season. It’s unclear if the farm may have been barred from doing so, a penalty that can be administered should a farm be found to not offer safe conditions. 

Bare Bones has 15 days to respond to the citation notice, according to OSHA. It may also request a conference with the department or contest the findings before a review commission. 

The post U.S. Dept. of Labor fines Delta farm after South African teen suffocates to death in grain bin appeared first on Mississippi Today.

Students, faculty and staff made it clear at the listening session that the Institutions of Higher Learning Board of Trustees held on Jackson State University’s campus Wednesday: Hire a permanent president whose tenure won’t end in resignation like the last three. 

In 2016, Carolyn Meyers resigned amid cratering finances. In 2020, William Bynum, Jr., resigned after he was arrested in a prostitution sting at a Clinton hotel. 

And though nobody spoke former president Thomas Hudson’s name, his resignation — for which the board still has not provided a detailed explanation — cast a shadow over the listening sessions, with many community members accusing the board of not doing its due diligence in his hiring.  

Only one person mentioned he’d like to see Elayne Hayes-Anthony, JSU’s temporary acting president, elevated to a permanent spot, though trustees did ask speakers not to name potential candidates as the board isn’t yet at that point in the search. 

Steven Cunningham, the trustee who is leading the search and the only JSU alumnus on the board, emphasized that he wants to hire a good president too. 

“I’m not just here as an arbitrary member of the board,” he said during the student session. “This place means a lot to me.” 

The board plans to do a national search. The listening sessions, which trustees will use to write a candidate profile, are the first step in that process. There’s also a survey on IHL’s website that will remain open until midnight on April 26. 

Faculty and staff

The first listening session began on a low note. Etta Morgan, an associate professor in the criminal justice and sociology department, kicked it off: Morale among faculty is at an “all-time low” she said, even under the temporary administration. 

“We are losing extremely good people,” she said. “Students have gotten to the point where they’re cursing you out in the classroom. You write them up, nothing gets done … It’s like we’re being destroyed from the inside out.” 

It’s not just faculty at JSU who are turning over, speakers noted — so are the presidents. But not everyone at the faculty and staff session seemed to agree that presidential turnover has necessarily meant bad leadership. When Robert Luckett, the director of the Margaret Walker Center suggested that was the case, there was vocal disagreement from the audience.  

“This is a level of instability that is deeply problematic for this institution.” Luckett said, adding that he had experienced “disastrous leadership” during his time at JSU. 

“I wouldn’t say that,” an audience member said. “That’s your opinion!”

The next president needs to understand JSU is a special place in Mississippi, many faculty told trustees. Others said they felt like JSU no longer has the magic it once did. 

LaKeisha Crye, an instructor and 2004 graduate, teared up as she told trustees that she didn’t want to send her daughters to JSU. Even though faculty receive a tuition discount, and JSU has programs that her kids are interested in, Crye said she would spend more money at university with a safer campus. 

Concerns about safety at JSU have become more frequent since the fall, when news made the rounds that a student was shot and killed on campus.

At times, faculty and staff chastised the board members. During a lull in speakers, Cunningham tried to encourage more people to go to the mic because the next president would “potentially be here for 15-20 years.” 

Latoya Reed, a director in the division of student affairs, said if faculty and staff weren’t talking, it was likely due to exhaustion and frustration with the board and its processes, not fear. 

“I would like to charge the board first and foremost to not let this be routine, not let this be an average run of show,” she said. 

Sophia Leggett, a faculty member who said she knew Cunningham when he was a student, called out IHL Commissioner Al Rankins. 

“Be sincere, be intentional,” she said. “It’s time out for games.” 

Students 

Multiple students talked about issues they’d like to see the next president improve, like campus safety, transparency from administration, and the ailing state of the buildings. There’s mold across campus, students reported, tiles are falling off the wall in one classroom, and only two working stalls in liberal arts building bathroom. 

“It’s been broken for a couple months now, and it still hasn’t been repaired, even if you scan the QR code and ask for repairs,” said Christi Madison Fortson, a senior psychology major. 

Fortson also touched on a topic many students dodged, garnering some chuckles from the audience. 

“In regards to the president,” she said, “I was hoping for some possibility of an extensive background check, just to make sure we get a president of the right mindset.” 

The next administration needs to be more stable, many students said. Some noted they had experienced two, even three, presidents in their time at JSU. They said if the president sets the right tone, then their professors will be more inclined to stay longer. 

Another big theme is students want a president who understands the culture of HBCUs. 

Elijah Karriem, a senior and the secretary of JSU’s NAACP chapter, noted that during the town halls — a fixture of student life during the water crises over the last few years — it felt like Hudson’s administration was responding with prepared statements. 

“We’re all humans,” he said. “Don’t read off the paper.”

Alumni and community 

The alumni session was the longest and most critical of trustees. 

Carrine Bishop, a faculty member whose family has deep roots at JSU, put it the most bluntly: “Stop hiring your friends,” she said to claps. “ We need to vet every individual.” 

Several alumni warily asked the board to include them in the search process. Some referenced the 2017 search when IHL hired Bynum even though he did not receive a favorable review from the search committee.  

“The only thing that we really ask is you give us a slate of candidates, not put someone in front of us and tell us that’s who is going to lead our university,” said Patrease Edwards, the president of the alumni association. 

Many alumni said they felt the board, and its presidents, have held JSU back from its true potential. Sen. Hillman Frazier, a Democrat who represents parts of Jackson, said lawmakers cite JSU’s turbulent leadership as reasons not to provide more funding to the university. 

The president of the neighborhood association near JSU said that he grew up seeing his neighbors sharecrop to afford to send their kids to JSU, but it doesn’t seem like IHL gives back to them. He cited the dilapidated buildings that surround campus. 

“My problem is this, the gatekeepers of this university will not allow the community to come in,” he said. 

Donna Antoine-LaVigne, an alumnus, said she was tired of hearing news about scandals on the ninth floor, but that she wanted people to know that JSU was more than its president. 

“The man or the woman does not make Jackson State,” she said. “Jackson state is Jackson State. It has a history in this community. It has done things for Black folk that nobody has thought about doing or has done.” 

She called on Cunningham and Rankins to hire a president with vision. 

“We have Black leadership with the board now — exercise it,” she said. “I’m not saying do anything special. Just do the right thing.” 

The post ‘Stop hiring your friends’: JSU community speaks up in listening session for next president appeared first on Mississippi Today.

Mississippi parents can opt out of vaccinating their children for school on account of religious beliefs, a federal judge has ruled. 

U.S. District Judge Halil Sul Ozerden on Monday issued a preliminary injunction in a lawsuit, filed last year by parents who said they’ve decided not to vaccinate their children because of religious beliefs, as first reported by Magnolia Tribune.

The plaintiffs filed the lawsuit against State Health Officer Dr. Dan Edney, Attorney General Lynn Fitch and various school officials. They claim that mandatory vaccinations violate the Constitution.

Mississippi led the nation in childhood vaccinations as one of six states without a religious exemption for vaccines. The others are California, Connecticut, Maine, New York and West Virginia, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures.

Kaye Bender, the executive director of the Mississippi Public Health Association, said when a child isn’t vaccinated, the effects extend beyond that child’s personal health. 

“Unvaccinated children don’t put just themselves at risk. They endanger all children they come into contact with as well as some adults and perhaps their entire community. So from a public health prevention perspective, MPHA strongly urges that childhood vaccinations be preserved.”

While the organization does not take a position on the pending litigation or any potential appeals, it has long advocated for full immunizations of all children and adults, Bender said. 

“Childhood immunizations have proved themselves over the years as safe and effective disease preventatives,” Bender said. “They protect children from illness now, from possible complications in the future, and may even save the child’s life.”

The plaintiffs argued that Mississippi already allows for medical exemptions in the case of five vaccinations required for kids to attend school: diphtheria, tetanus and pertussis; polio; hepatitis; measles, mumps and rubella; and chickenpox. 

Attorney General Lynn Fitch agreed that the law must allow the same right for families with religious beliefs that prevent them from vaccinating their children, according to documents.

The ruling will likely conclude the lawsuit, filed by parents Amanda Bosarge, Jaquelyn Butler, Kimberly Harrell, William Morgan, Paul Perkins, Brandi Renfroe, and Jeana Stanley, unless the attorney general’s office appeals the injunction or Ozerden does not enter a written order consistent with his ruling from the bench – both of which are unlikely. 

“We appreciate the judge’s thoughtful ruling from the bench and will give full consideration to his written order when provided,” said Debbee Hancock, communications director for the Attorney General’s office, in an emailed statement. “General Fitch has always been of the belief that there is a religious liberty exemption, as stated in our filings in this case, and we look forward to working with the Department of Health to ensure faithful execution of the judge’s order.”

Ozerden is giving the Mississippi State Department of Health until July 15 to come up with a process to allow people to request religious exemptions. 

Liz Sharlot, communications director of the department of health, said it was the agency’s long-standing policy to avoid commenting on pending litigation, but added that “the Mississippi State Department of Health continues to support strong immunization laws that protect our children.”

In a recent state board of health meeting, state officials touted Mississippi’s high childhood vaccination rate, saying the state led the nation with 98.9% of children entering kindergarten with complete vaccinations for the 2020-21 school year. 

John Gaudet, past president of the Mississippi Chapter of the American Academy of Pediatrics, said Mississippi’s high vaccination rate should be preserved and protected.

“We’re at the bottom of the heap in many health metrics, but at the top of the heap in protecting our children from vaccine-preventable illnesses,” he said. “There are a lot of reasons for that, and of them is because when we send our kids to kindergarten, we require them to be vaccinated, to not only protect them but to protect the other children in the classroom.

“I think that comes from a sense of community, and it’s endured for decades — that we take care of ourselves and we take care of those around us.”

Gaudet, who currently teaches pediatrics and clinical medicine at William Carey University’s College of Osteopathic Medicine, said deaths from measles and similar illnesses are rare because of the state’s high vaccination rate. That’s why Gaudet said he’s disappointed in the ruling — the outcome could prove fatal.

“When the number of vaccinated individuals at a school starts going down, kids who are susceptible, kids who have cancer or take immunosuppressant drugs, are more likely to get sick,” he said. “Not only that but more kids who are vaccinated are likely to get sick if numbers go down. This is something we need to continue to keep as a high priority.”

Jean Cook, chief of communications at the Mississippi Department of Education, said that the education department requires that schools have documentation on file regarding vaccines, but the department of health sets the policy regarding vaccine requirements. 

Vaccine requirement opponents have been unsuccessfully lobbying the Legislature for a religious exemption provision for years. Mississippi hasn’t had a religious exemption for child vaccinations since 1979.

Nationally, the rate of childhood vaccinations has fallen since the COVID-19 pandemic. Mississippi does not require the COVID-19 vaccine for school entry.

The post Mississippi has the highest childhood vaccination rate in the country. That may be about to change. appeared first on Mississippi Today.

Gov. Tate Reeves in a ceremony Wednesday signed into law the last three of a handful of bills he said shows Mississippi’s commitment to helping mothers and children post abortion ban.

He said Mississippi’s lawsuit that overturned Roe v. Wade abortion rights nationwide was only a first step, but that Mississippi is “walking the walk … delivering on our promise to mothers and babies.”

Reeves on Wednesday signed three bills, two aimed at helping Mississippi adoption and foster care and a third increasing tax credits for those who donate to state crisis pregnancy resource centers. He also recounted multiple bills he’s signed recently, creating a task force to improve adoption and foster care laws, to provide more funding and autonomy for the state’s Child Protection Services agency, and expanding use of “safe haven” boxes where parents can leave babies for adoption without fear of endangering the child or facing legal repercussions.

When asked, Reeves said he is also hopeful the extension of postpartum Medicaid coverage for mothers from 60 days to a year that he signed about a month ago will also help.

“I believe there’s a good chance that it will help,” Reeves said of the extended Medicaid coverage for mothers, but said the state lacks good data on that and many other health care issues. He said it “stands to reason” that if mothers receive more and longer-term care their health outcomes will improve.

But Reeves, up for reelection this year, reiterated his opposition to expanding Medicaid coverage for the working poor as most other states have done. He was asked by media to respond to Democratic gubernatorial challenger Brandon Presley vowing to expand Medicaid and saying it would be a pro-life move and help Mississippi hospital closure crisis.

Presley has vowed to expand Medicaid his first day in office.

“We’ve turned back billions of dollars in Mississippi,” he said. “Not because of policy. Only reason we’ve turned down federal dollars for health care in Mississippi is petty, partisan, cheap politics.”

On Wednesday Reeves said, “I have not changed my position on the expansion of Obamacare. Adding 300,000 additional people to welfare in our state is not the right path for Mississippi.”

Reeves said his plan to help the health care crisis in Mississippi is to help create jobs for people to have “more opportunity to be in the workplace.”

Reeves was flanked by several lawmakers as he signed the bills, and the room was packed with church representatives and pro-life advocates, who applauded the governor frequently.

Andrea Sanders, director of state Child Protection Services, thanked Reeves and lawmakers at a press conference after he signed bills.

“I would like to thank Gov. Reeves for his constant refrain: Being pro life means more than just being anti-abortion,” Sanders said. “We right now have 3,706 live souls on board, in the custody of the state … This year we have seen an unprecedented, early focus on families and children … the state is prepared to focus on the work that this agency does, which is different from any other in the state.”

Bills signed into law Wednesday by Reeves are:

House Bill 510: This establishes a “foster parents bill of rights,” aimed at increasing transparency for foster parents and providing them with more help from the Department of Child Protection Services.

House Bill 1671: This expands the cap on tax credits for pregnancy resource centers across the state from $3.5 million a year to $10 million. Reeves said this will help the centers, which prior to the abortion ban helped counsel expectant mothers against abortion, hire more people and expand services.

Senate Bill 2696: This creates an income tax credit for adoption expenses. It covers a maximum of $10,000 of qualified expenses for Mississippians who adopt children from Mississippi and up to $5,000 for those who adopt children out of state.

Sen. Nicole Akins Boyd, R-Oxford, was among the lawmakers who attended Wednesday’s bill signing. Starting last year, she headed up a special committee created by Lt. Gov. Delbert Hosemann to direct post-Roe legislation to help mothers, children and families.

Boyd said she is proud of the measures lawmakers passed and Reeves signed this year. She said task forces on foster care and adoption and on early intervention have major tasks ahead in informing policy and funding in Mississippi, and she expects her special committee will continue.

“There is a lot of work still to do — lots of work,” Boyd said.

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They are called the Partin Tables, named for Dr. Alan Partin, the renowned Johns Hopkins urologist who created the ground-breaking medical reference material. Partin developed the tables when he wasn’t performing hundreds and hundreds of often life-saving prostate surgeries a year.  

And you may wonder why a sports writer would write about such an obscure (if invaluable) medical reference. It is because Partin, who died on March 28 at age 62, grew up in Grenada and played college football at Ole Miss.

“Smartest damn guy I ever met,” said Madison resident Tim Bell, who was a student trainer for the Ole Miss football staff during the early 1980s when Partin played in the offensive line for the Rebels.

“Most guys played college football hoping to get to the pros,” Bell said. “Alan Partin knew he was gonna be a doctor, knew he was going to be a surgeon, knew he was going to study at Johns Hopkins. He was super, super intelligent and he was driven.”

So much for the hackneyed image of offensive linemen as dumb jocks. Partin, a chemistry and pre-med major, made straight A’s at Ole Miss. He was brilliant. He was far from alone among offensive linemen, and we’ll get to that.

Just google “Partin Tables” if you want to learn how smart Partin was. Developed in 1993, the tables are based “on thousands of nerve-sparing radical retropubic prostatectomies…” 

Asked to put the Partin Tables in layman’s terms, Dr. Charles Pound, division chief of urology at University of Mississippi Medical Center (UMMC), said, “It was a big deal. It is a big deal. For many years, it was the best tool you had to help doctors and patients make decisions on prostrate treatment. It gave you the info about the stage of your disease. It is still very helpful today. I still use it.”

As it turns out, Pound studied under Partin at Johns Hopkins and they were good friends. Indeed, Pound was the best man in Partin’s second wedding.

“I met him when I was a student and he was a resident at Johns Hopkins, and then we worked together for three or four years,” Pound said. “Clearly, Alan was really, really intelligent, but I’m not so sure that his drive and determination were not his greatest assets. He would take on anything with sheer determination and nearly always succeed. He was special.”

Dr. Theodore L. Deweese, CEO of Johns Hopkins Medicine, worked closely with Partin for years and issued a statement at the time of his cohort’s death. “Throughout his career as a researcher, clinician and a leader, Alan Partin was consistently at the heart of discovery and innovation in the filed of urology, always keeping a singular focus on improving the outcomes for our patients.”

Football, Partin often said, helped prepare him for his medical career. In a 2016 interview, Partin  talked about the correlation. “You think you’re running to the right, then the defense changes and now you’re going left. Everything can change in a split second…” Partin said. “As a surgeon, you have to do that non-stop. No surgery is the same.

“Everybody has anatomical variations,” he continued. “I remove men’s prostates when they have cancer. There are literally 387 well-defined maneuvers in that operation. Then you get inside a patient and notice an artery that isn’t supposed to be there is running across the area where you are operating. You have to change what you are doing. You have to adapt to that moment. That’s like coming up to the line and expecting to see one defense and they’ve shifted into another other. You still want to move the ball forward, so you have to think quickly, change up what you were doing and run the play.”

There’s one other striking similarity between playing in the offensive line and being a doctor. Put it this way: An offensive lineman is the only position in which the ultimate goal is to protect someone else. 

More than half a century of experience covering the sport has led this writer to this conclusion: Offensive linemen are often not only the smartest, but also most diligent and most selfless players on the field.

Selfless might be the most important of those traits. An offensive lineman toils mostly in obscurity, noticed only when an umpire throws his flag, and the referee announces over the loudspeaker, “Holding, number 75, 10-yard penalty, repeat first down.”

Quarterbacks, running backs and wide receivers get the headlines; offensive linemen – often referred to as the Big Uglies, for goodness sake, simply pave their way. Certainly not all become nearly as successful as Dr. Alan Partin, but let’s take a quick look at some of Partin’s Ole Miss teammates. Hoppy Cole, Partin’s roommate, owns banks. Murray Whitaker became a cardiologist. David Traxler runs a highly successful technology company in North Carolina. Greg Jeffcoat became a college registrar. Bobby Dye runs a successful resource management and financial planning company. Marc Massengale is another successful financial adviser. And then, of course, there’s Partin. That’s all from one team’s offensive line. Amazing.

Cole, who lives in Ellisville, was Partin’s college roommate for three and a half years.

“Big Al is what we called him,” Cole said. “Such a great guy, such a great friend – funny, kind, thoughtful and so, so smart.”

“Big Al and I made T-shirts that said we were part of the 30-30-30 club,” Cole said.

30-30-30?

“Yeah, that meant we played when we were either 30 points ahead, 30 points behind or there were 30 seconds left,” Cole said, chuckling.

That’s an exaggeration. I covered those Ole Miss teams. They played far more more than that.

The record will show that those Ole Miss teams (1979-82) lost more games than they won.

Thankfully, far more meaningful and lasting measures of achievement exist, which don’t always get reported. And in those measures, Dr. Big Al Partin and his partners in the Ole Miss offensive line, proved smashing successes.

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The United States Supreme Court has postponed for the eighth time this year a decision on whether to hear a case challenging the constitutionality of a Mississippi provision enacted in 1890 with the intent of preventing African Americans from voting.

The case is an appeal of a decision last year by the U.S. 5^th Circuit Court of Appeals upholding a provision imposing a lifetime ban on voting for many people convicted of felonies. The lifetime ban was imposed on certain crimes that the framers of the 1890 Mississippi Constitution believed at the time Black people were more likely to commit, the 5^th Circuit conceded in upholding the provision.

It is not known what the eight postponements in deciding whether to hear the case might mean.

“The Supreme Court takes about one of every hundred cases it’s asked to take,” said Rob McDuff, director of the Impact Litigation Project at the Mississippi Center for Justice, and part of the group asking the nation’s high court to hear the case. “But the troubling racial history of this provision makes it a more likely candidate for review than most of the other cases. I assume the repeated postponements mean the justices are considering this one very carefully. We will see.”

The Supreme Court justices are scheduled to meet in conference on Friday to decide if they will take up any of the cases currently pending. Before this latest postponement, the Mississippi case was supposed to be among those cases discussed during the Friday conference.

The Mississippi felony suffrage case had been on the schedule to be taken up at seven past conferences of the Supreme Court this year. In each of those instances, like this week, the justices opted to postpone a decision on the case.

Four of the nine judges must agree to take up a case on appeal in order for the high court to hear it. According to the U.S. Courts webpage, “the Court accepts 100-150 of the more than 7,000 cases that it is asked to review each year.”

The Mississippi Center for Justice and others filed the lawsuit currently pending before the Supreme Court on behalf of Mississippians who lost their voting rights after being convicted of felonies. Mississippi is among a handful of states — less than 10 — where people do not regain their voting rights at some point after completing their sentence.

Those challenging the lawsuit say the 1890 provision is unconstitutional because it was enacted for a discriminatory purpose, thus having a “racial taint.” State Attorney General Lynn Fitch argued the “racial taint” had been removed because of action in more recent times, and a majority of the 5th Circuit agreed.

In 1950 the Legislature passed a proposal approved by voters to remove burglary as one of the disfranchising crimes. And in the 1960s, the Legislature and ultimately the voters approved a provision making murder and rape disenfranchising crimes.

Those changes, the majority found, removed the “racial taint” from the original 1890 language. But McDuff pointed out that those changes were made during an era of intense racial conflict and discrimination in the state. Perhaps, more importantly, the changes did not allow Mississippians to vote on whether to remove lifetime bans from voting on people convicted of other felonies.

Or as Court of Appeals Judge James Graves wrote in his dissent, “Mississippians have simply not been given the chance to right the wrongs of its racist origins. And this court … deprives Mississippians of this opportunity by upholding an unconstitutional law enacted for the purpose of discriminating against Black Mississippians on the basis of race.”

Fitch’s office also argued that state commissions pondered changing the felony suffrage provision in the 1980s and opted not to do so, thus removing the racial taint.

Those crimes placed in the constitution where conviction costs a person the right to vote are bribery, theft, arson, obtaining money or goods under false pretense, perjury, forgery, embezzlement, bigamy and burglary.

Under the original language of the constitution, a person could be convicted of cattle rustling and lose the right to vote, but those convicted of murder or rape would still be able to vote — even while incarcerated.

In Mississippi, most people with felony convictions who lose their voting rights must petition the Legislature to get a bill passed by a two-thirds majority of both chambers to regain voting rights. Normally only a handful (less than five each year and none in 2023) of such bills are successful each session. There is also the option of the governor granting a pardon to restore voting rights, but no governor has granted pardons since Haley Barbour in 2012.

Editor’s note: The Mississippi Center For Justice President and CEO Vangela Wade serves on Mississippi Today’s board of trustees.

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