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An abortion pill manufacturer voluntarily dismissed its lawsuit challenging Mississippi’s restrictions on medication abortion on Thursday, but the legal question it raised is unlikely to disappear. 

GenBioPro, the manufacturer of generic mifepristone – the drug used along with misoprostol to end pregnancies up to 10 weeks of gestation – argued in its 2020 complaint that Mississippi’s restrictions on abortion medication were unconstitutional because they were much stricter than those set by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, and thus preempted by federal law. The legal landscape changed dramatically with the overturning of Roe in June, but if courts accept that argument, medication abortion could remain legal even in states like Mississippi that have banned the procedure.

There is little precedent on whether states can regulate drugs more strictly than the FDA, and legal and reproductive health experts were keeping a close eye on the Mississippi case. 

GenBioPro said in a statement that it would continue the effort to expand access to medication abortion.

“Given the changed national landscape, we have decided to adjust our strategy and withdraw our existing case in Mississippi,” the statement said. “We are committed to using the law to remove unnecessary barriers for patients and providers and we look forward to making an announcement soon about our next steps.”

Attorney General Lynn Fitch, whose office represented state health officers Dr. Thomas Dobbs and Dr. Daniel Edney in the lawsuit, claimed the voluntary dismissal was a “victory for life” in a statement Thursday night. 

“We are pleased to have again successfully defended Mississippi’s abortion laws,” Fitch said. “These laws represent the will of the people and the intent of the Legislature to promote life, protect the health and safety of women, and preserve the integrity of the medical profession. Our victory in Dobbs affirmed the right of the people to pass laws that defend these legitimate public interests.”

When GenBioPro filed the lawsuit in 2020, abortion was still legal but heavily regulated in Mississippi, with pills treated like any other procedure at the state’s only abortion clinic. Patients had to wait 24 hours between visits and take the first pill at the clinic, though the FDA allows people to take the pills at home.

In June, the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization ended the constitutional right to abortion and allowed Mississippi’s near-complete ban on the procedure to take effect. That upended abortion law around the country, and GenBioPro may have decided it could make a better argument in a different state or a more favorable appellate circuit. The U.S. 5th Circuit Court of Appeals, which hears cases from Mississippi, is the country’s most politically conservative. 

“My assumption is that the nature of the argument has changed for GenBioPro,” said Rachel Rebouché, dean of the Temple University Beasley School of Law and an expert in reproductive health law. “When it filed the lawsuit, it was taking aim at more narrow restrictions on abortion. Now it could file suit in a place that bans all abortion including medication abortion, essentially takes the first drug of a medication abortion out of those state markets. So I think in a sense that some of the legal questions have shifted because the nature of some of the laws have shifted.”

After the ruling in Dobbs, GenBioPro submitted a filing arguing that the state’s abortion ban – including pills – created a “that-much-more direct and glaring conflict” with the FDA’s approval of the drugs. It also sought to submit an amended complaint to address Mississippi’s trigger law. 

The Attorney General’s Office argued in an Aug. 4 filing that Mississippi’s trigger ban did not “impermissibly regulate the safety or efficacy” of an FDA-approved drug but rather prohibited “primary conduct—performing abortions—that the State is constitutionally entitled to prohibit.”

The brief also claimed that federal law criminalizes mailing abortion pills anywhere in the United States, citing laws that the Department of Justice has not enforced for decades. 

Instead of filing an amended complaint by its deadline of Aug. 18, GenBioPro dismissed its lawsuit.

Laurie Sobel, associate director for women’s health policy at KFF, a nonprofit focused on health policy research, said she anticipates GenBioPro will file a new lawsuit in a different jurisdiction, or another manufacturer could seek to make a similar case. The preemption argument could potentially be used in any state where medication abortion is tightly regulated or banned. 

“I don’t think this issue is going away,” she said. “The issue that everyone is now kind of focused on is where does regulation of medication come down to? Does the FDA get to regulate it as its sole domain? Or because it’s used for abortion, do states get to regulate it with respect to abortion?”

Rebouché said there are few precedents to predict how the arguments around preemption could play out. The closest analogy is likely state regulations of opioids: A Massachusetts ban on Zohydro, a new and controversial but FDA-approved opioid, was overturned by a federal court that found the state ban was preempted by federal law.

“It’s a novel argument in a sense that preemption has been around for a very long time – it’s part of the constitutional structure – but states really haven’t tried to ban FDA-approved drugs,” she said.

Before Mississippi’s abortion ban took effect, medication abortion accounted for well over half of the procedures performed at the state’s only abortion clinic. 

The FDA approved the pills in 2000. From then until 2017, it recorded 22 deaths among people who used mifepristone, or an average of one in 155,000, compared to a maternal mortality rate of 17 in 100,000 as of 2018.

Now, abortion rights supporters and opponents agree that the pills remain a major battleground in Mississippi and other states. Local advocates have vowed to help people get the pills, and international nonprofits and pharmacies have pledged to keep writing prescriptions and mailing drugs to Americans in states that ban abortion. 

Because states lack authority over the postal service, it’s unclear what they can do to stop the pills. But Mississippi lawmakers plan to try. 

Sen. Joey Fillingane, R-Sumrall, told Mississippi Today in May that the Legislature could pass a law targeting medication abortion specifically and directing law enforcement to focus on that issue.

“We know this is a new layer of law enforcement that we’re going to be expecting of you, in the agency, attorney general’s office — whomever it’ll apply to. You’re going to need more staff, you’re going to need more resources in order to enforce that new law,” Fillingane said. “It could very well be not only a directive further fleshing out the trigger law language, but also an appropriations bill that sends money to that agency and agencies that will be tasked with enforcing the law.”

The post Abortion pill maker drops Mississippi lawsuit with national implications, but fight isn’t over appeared first on Mississippi Today.

A decision by a panel of federal appeals judges upheld the ruling that a Cleveland Central High School student did not have her civil rights violated in the process of awarding graduation honors. 

Olecia James, a 2018 graduate of Cleveland Central, had her GPA recalculated weeks before graduation which resulted in her being ranked third and losing her position as salutatorian. James alleged in the original lawsuit that the change was racially motivated to allow a white male to receive the honor instead due to fear of white flight from the school district, which had recently consolidated East Side High School and Cleveland High School into Cleveland Central under a federal desegregation order.

After filing suit in the spring of 2019, a federal district ruled that James’s civil rights had not been violated in the summer of 2021, which was upheld on Friday. 

“That James did not end up class salutatorian may seem unfair. It was surely disappointing. But it was not unconstitutional,” the most recent order reads. 

James was not the first student to file suit against the Cleveland School District for discrepancies with graduation honors. Jasmine Shepard, who alleged that school officials forced her to share the 2016 valedictorian title with a white student despite Shepard having a higher GPA, also lost her case in federal court and her appeal, according to court documents. 

“It’s sad that students have no rights that school officials are bound to respect relative to academic honors in the Fifth Circuit (Appeals Court),” Lisa Ross, attorney for James and Shepard, told Mississippi Today. “While students must play by the rules, school officials are permitted to make up rules about academic matters at the end of a student’s graduating year.” 

James told Mississippi Today in 2019 that she lost eligibility for a scholarship to the University of Mississippi because she lost salutatorian status. She instead decided to attend Alcorn State University, majoring in mass communications. 

“I was sad but at the moment it was all about resilience and controlling what you can control,” James said in 2019. “I got a lot of doors opened for me … and I can’t wait to see what the future holds for me at Alcorn.”

Attorneys for the school district and former school officials did not respond by press time.

Read the full ruling here.

The post Cleveland student loses civil rights case over shared graduation honors appeared first on Mississippi Today.

Mississippi State University put faculty on post-tenure review at the highest rate during the 2021-22 school year, according to data released at a meeting of the Institutions of Higher Learning Board of Trustees. 

Post-tenure review is a kind of periodic evaluation that “goes beyond” typical evaluations by creating a pathway for a university to revoke a faculty member’s tenured status, according to the American Association of University Professors.

Out of 499 tenured faculty at Mississippi State last year, 19 faculty members – or 3.8% – were placed on post-tenure review, the highest rate of any public university in Mississippi. The institution with the second highest percentage was Mississippi Valley State University which placed 3 faculty out of 90 – or 3.3% – on post-tenure review. 

MSU and MVSU are the only two public institutions in Mississippi that require tenured faculty to go through post-tenure review in the sixth year of employment, according to a report from the Joint Legislative Committee on Performance Evaluation and Expenditure Review.

No faculty were fired or placed on a development plan as a result of post-tenure review this past year, according to the analysis.

The remaining six public universities, including the University of Mississippi Medical Center, did not place any faculty on post-tenure review last year, according to the data. Across all IHL universities, a little over 1% of all tenured faculty, who made up less than half of all faculty in Mississippi, were placed on post-tenure review last year.

The IHL board conducts this analysis annually, but the data released Thursday comes after trustees quietly revised IHL’s tenure policies earlier this year to add new criteria for post-tenure review. The data was presented on the board’s information agenda, so trustees did not publicly discuss it.

The analysis initially contained a “clerical error” for the numbers of tenured faculty on post-review tenure at Jackson State University and UMMC, Caron Blanton, IHL’s spokesperson, wrote in an email. IHL updated the numbers after an inquiry from Mississippi Today.

A type of indefinite job protection, tenure guarantees faculty can only be fired for cause or extenuating circumstances, such as egregious misconduct or the loss of departmental funding. Faculty work for years to achieve the status, and it is meant to ensure faculty can research controversial topics without fear of retaliation or political pressure.  

But ever since tenure was widely adopted by American universities in the 1940s, politicians and administrations have periodically sought to chip away at the protection it provides. By the mid-1990s, post-tenure review emerged as a new way to curtail academic freedom, according to the AAUP. The process is typically triggered after a faculty member receives one or more a negative evaluations during a set time period.

Many faculty say that post-tenure reviews are duplicative because they already undergo periodic reviews for the purpose of salary raises or appointments to university committees.  

“We already have processes in place for dealing with problematic professors,” said Dan Durkin, the chair of University of Mississippi’s faculty senate. “Post-tenure review is not even really necessary.”

In Mississippi, the purpose of post-tenure review is to “ensure tenured faculty remain effective,” according to the PEER report last year on tenure policies at the public universities. 

“A concern frequently linked to granting tenure to university faculty is that those faculty will become less productive following the receipt of tenure,” the report says. “In order to prevent that concern, the IHL Board established policies that require the annual evaluation of faculty and the establishment of a post-tenure review process for all tenured faculty.”

Durkin said that post-tenure review can make faculty risk-averse, leading some to pursue less controversial research that might be less productive. 

“Post-tenure review essentially creates tenure part two, and that changes the way professors approach things,” he said. “They may not research something that’s controversial, they may not publish papers out of concern, instead of spending time thinking and really developing something. It can fundamentally affect the way we do our jobs, and that is harmful to academia and ultimately harmful to the larger society.” 

IHL’s policy revisions earlier this year added new criteria by which faculty could be evaluated during post-tenure review, including a faculty member’s “effectiveness, accuracy and integrity in communications” as well as their “collegiality.” 

The revisions were widely criticized by faculty as vague standards that could be weaponized against marginalized faculty, particularly faculty members of color. Two national organizations – PEN America and the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression – intervened, writing a letter to Alfred Rankins, IHL’s commissioner, requesting the board roll back the changes. 

Rankins’ reply defended IHL’s tenure changes as “improvements to prior policy language,” adding “in reviewing your concerns, I must point out that almost any criterion commonly used in evaluating faculty for tenure could be used by a bad actor as a pretext for denying tenure for impermissible reasons.” 

Jeremy Young, PEN America’s senior manager for free expression and education, told Mississippi Today in May that he was so concerned by Rankins’ response, he wrote IHL a second letter. Young told Mississippi Today that IHL hasn’t replied. 

Faculty are now working to implement these changes in handbooks. At UM, Durkin said the faculty senate is looking to ensure the handbook hews as close as possible to AAUP’s recommendations. 

“Everything we’re doing, we’re making sure we’re applying the filters of First Amendment and academic freedom,” Durkin said. “We’re looking to not only define what things are, but also define what they’re not.”

Post-tenure review policies vary from one university to the next, according to the legislative report. At JSU, faculty have asked the administration to clarify the university’s post-tenure review and evaluation policies, according to faculty senate meeting minutes. The current faculty handbook, which was ratified in 2011, mentions post-tenure review only one time, in the preface. The handbook does not define a clear post-tenure review process separate from the annual evaluations that faculty receive.

The faculty handbook at University of Southern Mississippi notes that post-tenure review “is not a re-evaluation of tenure but is a way to assist faculty members in their professional development and document their ongoing commitment to the University’s mission.” 

The post IHL releases annual data on post-tenure review following controversial policy changes appeared first on Mississippi Today.

Hinds and Harrison counties can apply for a portion of the more than $100 million in emergency rental assistance funds that Gov. Tate Reeves is returning to the U.S. Treasury.

According to June 28 guidelines from the U.S. Treasury, “When feasible and consistent with jurisdiction needs, Treasury intends to reallocate excess funds from a grantee to another grantee in the same state. When appropriate, after such an intrastate allocation, a grantee’s excess funds will be reallocated in other states.”

It is not clear whether Hinds or Harrison will apply for the funds being returned to the federal government by Reeves. Credell Calhoun, who is president of the Hinds County Board of Supervisors, recently said he would inquire about the money.

The COVID-19 federal rental assistance program started in 2020 with the first round of pandemic funding for states and continued last year with a subsequent round of federal funding. Mississippi was allocated about $340 million. But earlier this month, Reeves announced he was cutting off applications for the program on Aug. 15 and returning all unobligated funds to the federal government.

It is likely the state will return more than $100 million – a portion of which could be available to Hinds and Harrison and to other states.

READ MORE: Gov. Tate Reeves halts federal rental assistance, says it incentivizes not working

By discontinuing the program, Reeves said he was incentivizing people to find jobs.

Besides federal legislation providing funds for states, large-population counties received money directly for emergency rental assistance. In Mississippi, Harrison and Hinds were the only counties to qualify for direct funding.

Hinds has obligated its allotment – about $15 million. Harrison has received about $11.4 million and still has some money left.

Sara Miller, senior policy analyst with the Hope Policy Institute, said if Hinds and-or Harrison applied for and received a portion of the state funds, they could only be spent in those two counties.

Vangela Wade, chief executive officer of the Mississippi Center for Justice, said: “Every Mississippian with a financial need for assistance and who qualifies for rental assistance should receive assistance regardless of their county of residence. “

 In social media posts and during a news conference, Reeves said the Mississippi economy is booming and people do not need help with rental assistance.

The program, Reeves wrote, “was originally intended to help those struggling as a DIRECT result of COVID. Yet, like so many other government programs on Democrats’ wish lists, it fundamentally lost its way and no longer serves its original purpose. “

Reeves later commented a Clarksdale landlord pleading guilty in civil proceedings in federal court in the Northern District of Mississippi of defrauding the Rental Assistance for Mississippi Program.

Reeves said the announcement is “more proof that Mississippi made the right call by ending RAMP. Not only did this program run astray of its original intent, but saw an increasing number of potentially fraudulent applications. While some Democrat politicians lambasted our decision, the discovery of this fraud scheme further justifies terminating the program.”

In a statement earlier this month, Wade of the Center for Justice said it is “ironic” that the governor was talking about fraud involving poor people when state audits have revealed that possibly more than $90 million in welfare funds have been diverted from the poor to supporters of many in the state’s political leadership for a litany of projects ranging from building a volleyball court to paying for cars and houses.

Based on information provided by the Home Corporation, which was tapped by Reeves to oversee the Mississippi Program, about 65% of the applicants approved to receive funds through the program are employed, and a majority are Black and female.

U.S. Census data, for the week ending July 11, showed that 44.5% of adult Mississippians surveyed reported being behind on their rent or mortgage, with eviction or foreclosure in the next two months being either very likely or somewhat likely.

During the same time period last year, 60.5% reported eviction or foreclosure as likely. At times during the pandemic, Mississippi led the nation in the percentage of people reporting likelihood of eviction or foreclosure.

Reeves reported in early August that 86,146 people applied for the program and that 36,889 were approved for assistance. It is not clear how many additional applications were approved during the final weeks that the Home Corporation was taking applications.

The post Harrison, Hinds could apply for federal rental assistance funds Gov. Reeves is returning appeared first on Mississippi Today.

Mississippi native Eddie Glaude, one of the world’s leading thinkers and teachers on race, keeps bearing witness about America’s ugly, unacknowledged history and how it will shape our future.

For years, Glaude, a faculty leader at Princeton University, has channeled his upbringing and his academic studies to inspire Americans to think deeply about where the nation has been and where it’s headed.

And this weekend, Glaude will come home to do more of it when he headlines the Mississippi Book Festival in Jackson. His most recent book “Begin Again” analyzes the past, present and future of America through the writings and life of James Baldwin.

This will be Glaude’s third trip home this calendar year. In May, he gave a stirring commencement address at Rust College, the historically Black institution in Holly Springs. A couple weeks earlier, he was in Jackson to deliver a powerful Medgar Wiley Evers lecture at the Two Mississippi Museums that attendees said was more akin to a sermon than a speech. 

Touching on several Baldwin writings, a central theme of Glaude’s April lecture was that “the American idea is in trouble.” 

“History matters because we carry it within us. And Mississippi is soaked in history,” Glaude said. “And as James Baldwin wrote, ‘It is in great pain and terror one that one begins to assess that history, which is placed one where one is and formed one’s point of view, because one enters into battle with that historical creation oneself.’” 

Being largely unwilling to acknowledge our true past, Glaude says, is why so many Americans feel so uncertain about our future.

“We’re trapped in a history we refuse to know but carry within us,” Glaude said. “And Baldwin says this is the root of our unadmitted sorrow. The terrors and panic we experience have everything to do with the gap between who we imagine ourselves to be and who, deep down, we really are. The fact that we evade that question locks us into a kind of perpetual adolescence.”

Glaude continued: “I come from a tradition that offers a story of the country that forces it to confront its ugliness, to in fact urge the country to grow the hell up. We have to live close to the ground if we’re gonna change. We have to understand the power of everyday ordinary people, to imagine a better future. We have to tell ourselves the truth in order to release us into a different way of being in the world. We have to tell the truth to Gov. Tate Reeves, tell the truth to Joe Biden. As long as we view racial equality as a philanthropic enterprise, as long as we view racial justice as an act of charity, we’re in trouble still.”

Watch Glaude’s lecture at the Two Mississippi Museums on April 28:

The post Mississippi native Eddie Glaude bears witness appeared first on Mississippi Today.

Greenwood Leflore Hospital will delay resuming inpatient operations even after clean-up efforts related to a sewage leak have been completed, hospital officials announced Thursday.

Officials cited the hospital’s precarious financial position as the cause of the shutdown. 

“The hospital continues to be on diversion and is temporarily delaying the re-opening of inpatient services,” the press release stated. “Further analysis is required to determine with labor shortages and higher labor costs how we can continue to operate while remaining viable until a lease is finalized.”

Questions about the number of employees affected by the shutdown of inpatient services were not immediately answered by hospital officials. 

The hospital said it had received approval by the Mississippi State Department of Health for the repairs to the underground crawl space the sewage had seeped into earlier this week, and that it is now safe to resume normal operations. 

The clinics inside the hospital are reopening and outpatient services, including surgeries, laboratory and radiological testing have resumed. 

On Monday, clogged manholes forced sewage into the crawl space below the hospital. As a result, at least 17 patients were transferred to six other hospitals across Mississippi and one hospital in Arkansas. At least 16 patients were discharged. 

Despite the sewage problem, the hospital has continued to operate its labor and delivery unit, emergency department and the clinics located outside of the main hospital building. 

The hospital, which is jointly owned by Leflore County and the city of Greenwood, laid off 30 people in May to offset losses during the pandemic. It announced in June that it is in talks with the University of Mississippi Medical Center on a joint operation agreement. 

“GLH began the process of seeking affiliation partners as the hospital emerged from the Delta and Omicron waves of the pandemic,” the hospital said in a June press release. “Affiliation, particularly with a larger system like UMMC, the state’s only academic medical center and largest hospital, can result in cost efficiencies that are necessary to attain sustainable operations over the long term.”

UMMC declined to comment on the potential lease agreement.

The 208-bed facility is one of the largest employers in Leflore County with 770 employees.

The post Greenwood hospital delays resuming inpatient operations following sewage leak, cites financial troubles appeared first on Mississippi Today.

The Mississippi State Personnel Board gave the state’s welfare department the green light Thursday to hire new legal counsel for its high-profile civil lawsuit to recoup millions in misspent welfare funds.

Jackson-based law firm Jones Walker will replace former U.S. Attorney Brad Pigott, the contract attorney who initially crafted the lawsuit, after the Gov. Tate Reeves administration abruptly removed Pigott from the case last month. The new one-year contract is for up to $400,000, with partners working on the case earning a rate of $305-an-hour. Pigott’s contract was for up to $75,000 for the previous year.

One defense attorney on the case is criticizing the state for using taxpayer money in its pursuit of many low-level characters in the overarching welfare scandal. The attorney, Jim Waide, is also raising questions about how the new contract will ensure that Reeves is not controlling the case to the extent that he would prevent other potential parties, including himself and former Gov. Phil Bryant, from being included as defendants if the attorneys deemed that appropriate. Mississippi Today has uncovered communication connecting certain welfare expenditures to both Bryant and Reeves.

Mississippi Department of Human Services is suing 38 people or companies, including former NFL quarterback Brett Favre and three retired WWE wrestlers, who it says were responsible for misspending roughly $24 million from a federal grant called Temporary Assistance for Needy Families.

“They (Jones Walker) will vigorously pursue this case—wherever it leads,” Gov. Reeves said in a statement following the contract approval. “They will eagerly cooperate with those criminal investigators whose mission is to get truth and justice for the misconduct that occurred during the previous administration. And they will leave no stone unturned in the effort to recover misspent TANF funds.”

In the personnel board meeting, Mississippi Department of Human Services Director Bob Anderson said he believes the agency needs a larger legal team as the litigation moves into the discovery and trial phases. Anderson had previously justified Pigott’s removal by saying the attorney failed to communicate with the agency about a subpoena he filed on University of Southern Mississippi athletic foundation.

Anderson said the new attorneys who will be handling the case, Kaytie Pickett and Adam Stone, have experience in complex commercial litigation as well as procurement-related matters.

“While Brad Pigott initiated and prepared the original complaint in this case, we believe that Jones Walker is who we need to finish the process of getting to final judgment and recovery of funds,” Anderson said in a written statement. “They have a deep bench and are well acquainted with complex electronic discovery platforms, which will be crucial in a case like this involving hundreds and thousands of documents.”

Jones Walker, like many large law firms across the state, is a frequent campaign donor to Mississippi politicians — including a total of at least $18,000 to Reeves, according to records on FollowTheMoney.org. Locally, the firm used to be Watkins Ludlam Winter & Stennis before it merged with Jones Walker over a decade ago.

The Attorney General’s Office also had to approve the contract.

Waide, an attorney for a defendant in the case, wrote a letter to the personnel board before the meeting criticizing the state’s decision to hire a new law firm and urging the board not to approve a contract that wastes taxpayer funds. Waide represents Austin Smith, the nephew of the former MDHS director John Davis, who is facing criminal charges in the scheme.

Kelly Hardwick, director of the personnel board, said the board reviewed the letter, but that “that’s outside of anything we would consider.”

Hardwick said the Jones Walker contract was within the state’s procurement guidelines and regulations.

Waide had recently filed an objection to the state’s motion to withdraw Pigott as counsel and asked that the court examine whether Reeves is controlling the lawsuit to protect himself and his supporters. The filing came after Mississippi Today uncovered text messages connecting the current governor to the funding of fitness trainer Paul Lacoste, a defendant in the case. Lacoste’s organization received $1.3 million, more than $300,000 of which went to Lacoste personally, according to records, to conduct fitness classes for roughly eight months in 2019. Then-Lt. Gov. Reeves attended the boot camp while texts show Lacoste used his relationship with Reeves to endear himself to the welfare director.

Previous reporting also showed that Reeves’ office directed MDHS to remove the University of Southern Mississippi Athletic Foundation, whose board is made up of several Reeves donors, from the suit before it was filed. The foundation used $5 million in welfare funds to build a volleyball stadium on campus.

“…the governor himself is a potential defendant,” Waide wrote to the personnel board. “Because of the potential financial interest of the governor, he should hire his own attorney, and should not be furnished an attorney at taxpayer expense.”

In his statement, Anderson noted that Jones Walker will be tasked with, among other things, evaluating claims against additional potential defendants. Several law firms Anderson spoke with could not take the case because of conflicts.

Waide also called into question why Attorney General Lynn Fitch, the state’s official litigator, is not handling the case.

“Unless the Attorney General has a conflict of interest, there is no reason why she should not pursue this suit without costing the taxpayers,” Waide wrote.

Waide also argued that if MDHS hires a law firm to represent the state, it should pay the firm based on what they recoup in the litigation, not a set fee, especially since so many of the defendants will likely not be able to pay the potential damages. An attorney under a contingency arrangement might be more likely to pursue other entities that received welfare funds — such as the USM athletic foundation — who received larger amounts of money and would be more likely able to return the funds.

“An hourly fee arrangement with any firm will likely result in the expensive pursuit of low-level defendants, such as Austin Smith and others, who have no means to pay a judgement. On the other hand, an attorney hired on a contingent fee basis would pursue those who are financially able to pay a judgement, and would cost the taxpayers nothing if no funds are recovered.”

Jones Walker did not return calls to Mississippi Today for this story.

“This work is just beginning, and it may take years—but we will follow the facts wherever they go and pursue it for as long as it takes,” said Reeves’ statement Thursday. “That is what the state has done since I took office, and we will continue to do it aggressively.”

The post Welfare agency hires new counsel for civil suit, defense attorney objects appeared first on Mississippi Today.

Students in Mississippi approached pre-pandemic levels of achievement on state tests this spring, showing significant growth from the previous year. 

The results from the 2022 administration of the state tests, or Mississippi Academic Assessment Program (MAAP), show that 2-4% fewer students passed English, science, and math exams this year than in 2019. 

Last year in 2021, the first time that state tests were administered following the pandemic, around 10% fewer students passed their tests than in 2019, which education officials said was evidence of the impact of COVID-19 and were reflective of national trends.  

These results, presented to the State Board of Education on Thursday, are a testament to the hard work of students and educators, as well as the return to in-person learning, according to Department of Education officials. 

“They provide clear and indisputable evidence of the resilience of students and educators and their ability to recover from the disruptions to learning,” said Kim Benton, interim state superintendent of education. “We don’t always see that, but there’s a lot that has been going on to mitigate this disruption in learning and people have pulled out all the stops to make sure that’s happened.” 

The number of students who scored proficient was exactly the same as or slightly above numbers from 2019, indicating that higher performing students possibly bounced back faster. Proficiency refers to the percentage of students who scored at a level 4 or 5 (proficient or advanced) on a 1 through 5 scale. A level 1 indicates a score of “minimal,” 2 is “basic” and 3 is “passing.” 

Benton said these results show the need to look at the data of individual students and identify which areas they require support to advance. 

“When I looked at the distribution, what it looked like to me was that we moved children up, we regained the proficiency levels pre-pandemic, but you also have children right there on the cusp (of passing)…which means we’ve got to push further faster,” she said. 

Research from the Nation Bureau of Economic Research published in May of this year showed that, nationally, high-poverty schools were more likely to go remote and suffered larger declines in academic achievement when they did so.

Benton said the department is reviewing this new data to ensure that they are providing support appropriately, since literacy and math coaches are assigned to districts based on the number of students who did not reach proficiency.  

A more detailed look at the state test results, including performance by subgroup and growth data, will be available in October when the state publishes districts’ accountability results. 

View English test results by district here:

View math test results by district here:

The post Students score near pre-pandemic levels on state tests appeared first on Mississippi Today.

GULFPORT — Yes, track and field superstar Brittney Reese says, there are times these days when she walks the hallways of Gulfport High School, she feels a powerful sense of deja vu.

“It wasn’t that long ago, you know, I was one of these kids trying to figure it out,” Reese says.

Actually, it was 18 years ago – 2004 – when Reese graduated from Gulfport High. There are other ways to look at it. Such as: For Reese, it was four Olympics Games ago. It was three Olympic medals (one gold, two silver) ago. It was two NCAA championships at Ole Miss, 12 U.S. championships and six world championships ago. It was before she became the greatest female long jumper in history.

And now, after a professional career spent traveling the globe and leaping distances few can even imagine, Reese has returned to her hometown, to her high school, as a coach.

“It’s time to give back,”Reese says. “I’ve always said I was going to come back and try to give back to the people who have done so much for me.”

Reese is the new coach of the Gulfport girls cross country and track and field teams. She is also developing an indoor track and field program, for which she will be the head coach of both boys and girls teams.

Her mission: To help return Gulfport High track and field to the powerhouse status that the program enjoyed back when she was running and jumping and her Gulfport coach, now retired Prince Jones, was coaching championship teams seemingly year after year.

“We’ve had some success in recent years, but not to the standards Gulfport has had in the past,” says Gulfport’s new athletic director Matt Walters. “Who better to help show us the way than homegrown world champion, a living legend?”

You should know that Reese called Walters – not the other way around – about the job.

Joe Walker Jr., the Mississippi Sports Hall of Fame coach who recruited Reese to Ole Miss, believes Gulfport has made a grand slam hire.

“Brittney has all the tools to be a great coach,” Walker said. “She knows the sport, has great character and always has had the perfect blend of humility and ego to coach. She has what it takes.”

What Reese needs – what any coach worth his or her stopwatch needs – are athletes. In Gulfport’s case, more athletes are needed.

As Prince Jones, the 77-year-old ex-coach puts it: “When you load a bus up full of really good athletes, it makes you a really good coach. The key is numbers.”

To that end, Reese has spent much of her first few days on the job recruiting. No, she isn’t recruiting from other schools. She is recruiting from other Gulfport sports teams: football, basketball, soccer, tennis, you name it. Her belief is that participation in track and field and cross country will help athletes in their other respective sports and vice-versa.

She is finding allies in that approach. One is Marcus Price, the new head coach of the Gulfport girls basketball team, who says, “I told my girls I wanted them to get out there and learn everything they can from her. There are so many lessons these kids can learn from her about preparation and perseverance, as well as technique. I am in awe of her myself.”

Reese, who is by nature quiet and reserved, doesn’t have to just talk a good game, either. She stands as living, breathing proof that playing more than one sport is not only possible but preferred. After all, Prince Jones once recruited her off the basketball team. She competed in basketball, track and field (jumping and sprints) and cross country. She was all-state in all.

Indeed, basketball was her primary sport even into junior college at nearby Gulf Coast.

At first, Reese ran cross country and then sprints during the track season. But Jones was short of athletes in the field events and asked for volunteers to try the long jump. “I was looking for someone who could jump at least 17 feet,” Jones says.

Several girls tried without success, Jones says. Reese said, “Coach, I can do that.”

Says Jones, “I told her you’re already running the 100, 200 and all the relays, but she said it again, ‘Coach, I can do that.’”

So Jones let her try. She jumped 17 and a half feet. I told her to try it again, and she jumped 18 and a half. Suddenly Reese had another event, one in which she would eventually set a world record and earn the nickname “Da Beast.”

Reese believes her versatility – she also high jumped – will help her in coaching. “I’ve done pretty much all of it and been around it at a high, high level,” she says.

She has also coached when she wasn’t competing. Before moving back to Gulfport, Reese lived in San Diego, where she worked out at the Olympic Training Center and coached at San Diego Mesa Community College. She also worked as a private coach for runners and jumpers.

It is an old axiom in sports that not all great athletes make great coaches. The theory is that great athletes have so much natural ability they don’t necessarily have to work as hard on fundamentals and training. But both Prince Jones and Joe Walker say Reese was a tireless worker.

Matt Walters, the athletic director, says Reese “has hit the ground running.”

“Naturally, there was a concern about how an Olympic and  world champion would react to coaching high school kids,” Walters said. “She has been extremely humble and has really connected with the kids. She’s been going to all the teams on campus and the kids have embraced it. She’s going to the junior highs and even the elementary schools.”

Sixteen-year old Lania McDonald, who will run both cross country and track and field, says she can scarcely believe she will be coached by a former Olympic gold medalist from her own hometown. “I’d be crazy not to soak up as much of her knowledge as I can,” she said, calling her new coach “down to earth” and “funny.”

Reese will also help the Gulfport boys team jumpers, because, well, why would she not?

Deavious Weary, a 15-year-old, is running cross country now but plans to long jump in the spring and says he can’t wait to be coached by a former world champ. When Reese is told what Weary has said, she smiles and says, “He’s got the bounce, I can see that. There’s a lot more to it than that, of course.”

But that’s the deal: Few people in the world know more about the “a lot more to it” than Brittney Reese, who also looks forward to coaching her adopted son Alex Wilde, who is a ninth grader currently practicing with the Gulfport football team. Alex has shown some promise as a long jumper.

Reese made her last competitive jump at the Tokyo Olympics in June of 2021, winning the silver medal, coming just 1.18 inches short of the gold. She will turn 36 in September and says she knew in her heart it was time to get on with the rest of her life And she knew where she wanted to live it – and what she wanted to do.

She says she is proudest of “my longevity, to be as successful as I was for as long as I was. I was at the top or near the top of the world for more than 10 years. I can’t complain in any way about my career.”

As for the move across the continent back to Gulfport, Reese says, “San Diego was nice, really expensive, but really nice. But this is home. I’ve got family and so many friends here. This is where I want to live. Every day that I have been back has re-enforced it was the right decision to me.”

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For Mississippi Today’s first members-only book club, managing editor Kayleigh Skinner was joined by award-winning chef and now author Vishwesh Bhatt to answer questions from Mississippi Today members. Chef Bhatt discussed the inspiration behind his book, how he came into cooking, and the importance of community, among many other topics like how to properly approach cooking okra. His new book, “I Am From Here: Stories and Recipes from a Southern Chef” debuted August 16 and is a collection of recipes and stories from his unique perspective as a chef who has made a home here in the South. Read a full review of Bhatt’s book.

Watch the full event:

A native of Gujarat, India, Bhatt later moved to the United States where he’s become known for his inventive dishes that bring southern staples together with subcontinent cuisine, such as Peanut Masala–Stuffed Baby Eggplant and Collard-Wrapped Catfish with a spicy Peanut Pesto. He is 2019 Southern Living’s Southerner of the Year, 2019 James Beard Foundation Best Chef South, and was inducted into the Fellowship of Southern Farmers, Artisans, and Chefs in 2022. Bhatt has been a part of Chef John Currence’s City Grocery Restaurant Group since 1997, becoming executive chef of Snackbar in Oxford, Miss., in 2009.

Bhatt will host a book signing prior to participating in the Taste of the South panel during the Mississippi Book Festival on August 20.

The post Mississippi Today hosted chef Vishwesh Bhatt for a members-only book club appeared first on Mississippi Today.