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MRA athletics

Mississippi’s private schools, such as Madison Ridgeland Academy and Presbyterian Christian, shown here from a 2019 game, plan to start the 2020 season on time in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Mississippi currently has the highest COVID-19 positivity rate in the U.S., but the state’s private high schools plan to play organized football on August 13, a week from Thursday.

The Mid-South Association of Independent Schools (MAIS), the governing body of Mississippi private schools, will open its regular season on Thursday, August 20, but several private school teams around the state are scheduled to be involved in football jamborees with multiple teams August 13 and 14.

Said Shane Blanton, MAIS executive director in a phone conversation Wednesday morning: “We’re excited to get started. We think we have a very good plan. We’re trying our best to do what’s right for our children.”

Mississippi’s public high schools have delayed the start of the football season until Sept. 4. The Southeastern Conference has delayed its start until Sept. 26. The Southwestern Athletic Conference has postponed football season until the spring.

Rick Cleveland

Across the nation, changes to existing football plans are announced nearly daily. The University of Connecticut (UConn), which had been scheduled to play Ole Miss before the SEC went to a conference games-only schedule, announced the cancellation of its 2020 football season early Wednesday.

Louisiana’s public high schools Wednesday delayed the start of the 2020 season until October.

In Mississippi, Greenwood-Leflore County Schools have  joined Greenville High School in canceling fall sports. Greenville’s school board made the unanimous decision last week. Greenwood-Leflore’s school board voted 3-2 Tuesday. Greenwood-Leflore high schools include Greenwood, Leflore County and Amanda Elzy high schools. That list could grow. Several other school systems around the state are known to be weighing options.

Gov. Tate Reeves has made no executive order concerning the playing of football, but said in his scheduled press conference Tuesday, “Nobody likes high school sports as much as I do, but I am going to focus on the education of our students first and foremost. There are several sports at the high school level that can be safely played. I know this for sure: I do not envision any scenario in which there can be a large crowd in the stands to watch those games.”

At the same press conference, State Health Officer Dr. Thomas Dobbs said his chief fear would be for the fans in the stands, rather than the players on the field.

“There is a risk for the players,” Dobbs said. “That said, there aren’t a lot of 65-year-olds taking the field out there. But there would be in stands, and that could promulgate community spread in areas. So, if we’re going to play football in the next couple of weeks, the stands would need to be nearly empty.”

Following the press conference, asked directly about the wisdom of playing football, given Mississippi’s COVID-19 numbers presently, Dobbs responded, “I just wouldn’t do it. Not now.”

Shane Blanton

MAIS chief Blanton said his organization has a plan for football attendance.

“For at least the first weekend, we are looking at 25 percent of capacity,” Blanton said. “We hope we can raise that to 50 percent and perhaps beyond that as the state’s numbers improve. In Alabama, they are going 100 percent from the beginning.”

As for how the crowd size limitations will be enforced Blanton said, “That will be left up to the individual schools.”

Traditional rivalry games such as those that involved Jackson Prep, Jackson Academy and Madison-Ridgeland Academy routinely pack the stadiums. MRA is scheduled to play at Jackson Academy on Sept. 4. A reasonable question: How will it be decided who can attend and who can’t? Better yet, who is going to tell grandmothers and grandfathers, aunts and uncles: No, you can’t come in?

Mississippi’s current statewide restrictions limit gatherings to 10 people indoors and 20 people outdoors and call for social distancing of six feet of separation between persons who do not live in the same household. Any football game will exceed those “gathering” limits on the playing field alone, not to mention the sidelines or the stands. As for the six feet of separation, you can’t block or tackle from six feet away.

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Eric J. Shelton/Mississippi Today

Mississippi House speaker Philip Gunn, center, and Lt. Gov. Delbert Hosemann, right, talk after Gov. Tate Reeves press conference at the State of Mississippi Woolfolk Building in Jackson, Miss., Thursday, May 7, 2020.

Members of the Mississippi House are expected to file a lawsuit, as early as Wednesday, challenging Gov. Tate Reeves’ partial veto of a bill spending federal COVID-19 relief funds.

Legislative sources said lawmakers also are considering reconvening in Jackson as early as next week to consider overriding some of Reeves’ five vetoes he issued in early July, including his partial veto of the K-12 education budget.

The looming lawsuit and return to Jackson sets up yet another clash between Republican legislative leaders and the Republican governor.

Earlier this year, Reeves sparred with House Speaker Philip Gunn and Lt. Gov. Delbert Hosemann, who presides over the Senate, over who should get spending authority of $1.2 billion in federal coronavirus relief funds. The Legislature prevailed. Lawmakers also bucked the will of Reeves when they voted to remove the state flag in June.

Reeves’ office did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Wednesday.

Legislators have been waiting for Reeves to call them back in special session to deal at least with Reeves’ partial veto of the education budget and to pass a budget bill for the Department of Marine Resources. DMR was not funded before the Legislature left July 1 because of a disagreement between the House and Senate over Reeves’ authority to spend millions in Gulf restoration funds.

The Constitution gives the governor sole authority to call a special session. But this year legislators passed a resolution giving Gunn and Hosemann the authority to reconvene the Legislature to take up COVID-19 issues. Once in session, if approved by two-thirds of the members, legislators could take up essentially any issue. A two-thirds vote also would be required for any veto override.

There has been speculation about whether Reeves’ partial veto of a bill appropriating federal funds to hospitals and other healthcare providers is constitutional.

The state Constitution gives a governor some line-item veto power, but the parameters of that power have been debated for years and the subject of legal challenges in past administrations. The state Supreme Court has ruled that those line-item veto powers are limited.

“I would want to more thoroughly research it … but when I read the bill with that in  mind, it seemed the veto  was unconstitutional based on the latest precedent in the Leflore County private prisons case,” said Sen. Hob Bryan, D-Amory. Bryan was referring to an early 2000s case when the Supreme Court ruled unconstitutional a partial by then-Gov. Ronnie Musgrove of money going to private prisons.

Bryan, chair of the Senate Public Health Committee, was one of the key architects in the final days of June as legislators finished their work and adjourned after passing the bill to spend $130 million in funds to help health care providers, such as hospitals, and other entities, such as food pantries, with their work fighting the coronavirus. The money was part of $1.25 billion the state received in the federal Coronavirus Aid, Relief and Economic Security Act.

Reeves vetoed $2 million lawmakers directed to the shuttered North Oak Regional Medical Center in Senatobia and $6 million earmarked to the MAGnet Community Health Center to study and try to combat health disparities, such as combating the high impact COVID-19 has inflicted on the African American community. The spending was part of a $130 million bill directing CARES Act money to Mississippi health care and hospitals.

Reeves argued the hospital should not receive the money because it was closed and thus not dealing with coronavirus patients. He also said he was not familiar with the group receiving the funds to try to curb health disparities.

The money for the Senatobia hospital would only be available if reopened before the end of the year. The hospital is located in the district of Republican House Ways and Means Chairman Trey Lamar, who over the years has been at odds with Reeves over numerous issues, dating back to Reeves’ terms as lieutenant governor.

In the early 2000s, Musgrove vetoed a portion of the appropriations bill for the Department of Corrections that provided money to operate a private prison in Leflore County.

The court, in a 5-2 ruling, said the governor could not veto restrictions on how those funds were spent. In a complex legal opinion, the Court ruled that Musgrove would have had to vetoed the entire section of the bill providing funds for the Greenville prison.

Bryan was a plaintiff in the 1990s when the Supreme Court ruled then-Gov. Kirk Foridice unconstitutionally vetoed portions of both appropriations and bond bills issuing long-term debt for the state.

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