Mississippi’s sodomy law cost taxpayers nearly half a million dollars, but it remains on the books

Published

1 year ago

June 25, 2024

mississippitoday.org – Taylor Vance and Molly Minta – 2024-06-25 04:00:00

Mississippi coughed up more than $400,000 this year to attorneys who sued the state over an unconstitutional sodomy law that criminalizes oral and anal sex, and if a similar suit is filed in the future, it could pay even more money.

The Legislature appropriated and paid the fees to civil rights attorneys from multiple legal organizations after Mississippi Attorneys General Jim Hood and Lynn Fitch spent years defending the antiquated sodomy law — Mississippi Code Section 97-29-59.

But Mississippi could be on the hook for even more fees, according to Matthew Strugar, an attorney who helped bring the case. That’s because lawmakers this session let die in committee a bill to repeal the state’s “unnatural intercourse” law, which was primarily used decades ago to target LGBTQ+ Mississippians and sex workers.

Mississippi officials no longer prosecute people for having consensual sex, but some people convicted in the past of sodomy are still required to register as sex offenders.

This means the people who, due to a quirk of the lawsuit, remain on the Mississippi Sex Offender Registry for sodomy convictions could sue the state at any time, Strugar said, even though state officials are no longer requiring those convicted of sodomy to register as sex offenders.

Mississippi is “still vulnerable to a lawsuit from another person who remains on the registry,” said Strugar, who received a cut of the fees in early April via the Center for Constitutional Rights. Some of these people were convicted decades ago.

The U.S. Supreme Court declared unconstitutional laws that criminalize private, consensual sexual conduct in the 2003 case Lawrence v. Texas. Even the conservative U.S. Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals acknowledged Mississippi’s law was unconstitutional when it reviewed and affirmed the attorneys’ fees, the amount of which Fitch’s office contested last year.

Initially considered a common-law crime, sodomy has been illegal in Mississippi since the state’s founding and was codified into law in 1839. In the original 1890 state Constitution, sodomy was included in a list of crimes, along with rape, adultery and fornication, for which courts were allowed to exclude the public from attending or witnessing the prosecution.

Strugar has sued a number of states over sodomy laws. He noted there are more problems with Mississippi’s law than the possibility of more litigation. The law states: “Every person who shall be convicted of the detestable and abominable crime against nature committed with mankind or with a beast, shall be punished by imprisonment in the penitentiary for a term of not more than ten years.”

The law is vague, Strugar said, lacking a description of what is a “crime against nature committed with mankind.” It also doesn’t distinguish between consensual and nonconsensual oral and anal sex.

“There’s a lot you can do with a law that doesn’t say what it’s prohibiting,” Strugar said. “You can say it prohibits whatever you want it to prohibit.”

The same law is also Mississippi’s only prohibition against bestiality. When people in Mississippi are prosecuted for bestiality, they are technically charged under the sodomy law, Strugar said.

This means some of the half-dozen or so men still on the registry could have committed sexual assault or had sexual activity with an animal, but Mississippians seeking to find information on sex offenders in their area would not be able to tell from the online data, which only lists them as guilty of sodomy.

The reason these men weren’t removed from the registry has to do with how the case played out. It was originally filed as a class-action lawsuit in 2015, meaning if Strugar’s clients had prevailed, Mississippi would have had to remove from its registry every person with a sodomy conviction.

But in an effort to work with the state, Strugar negotiated to delete the names of more than 30 Mississippi women who had been convicted under Louisiana’s unnatural intercourse law and required to register as sex offenders in Mississippi. The move lowered the number of people with a sodomy conviction in Mississippi below the threshold needed for a class-action suit, forcing Strugar to represent people individually.

The men who remain on the registry are mainly poor, Strugar said, and likely not in a position to navigate the process of getting in touch with a civil rights attorney.

Still, Strugar said he and the other attorneys fought to invalidate Mississippi’s law. They had hoped U.S. District Judge Carlton Reeves, who initially ordered the state to fork over money in attorneys’ fees, would take that step. Instead, he ordered the state to purge the plaintiffs from the sex offender registry.

“He is one of the most courageous judges in the country, but he still took a narrow ruling,” Strugar said.

The easiest way the state could protect itself from a similar suit in the future and avoid paying more fees is to repeal its sodomy law, which state Rep. Jeramey Anderson, a Democrat from Moss Point, has tried to do for several years.

Anderson has introduced a bill numerous times that would have simply deleted the “mankind” portion of the statute but left the bestiality part of the law intact, which would have essentially repealed the sodomy law.

“This law is discriminatory and it’s antiquated,” Anderson told Mississippi Today.

Last year, the House speaker’s office referred Anderson’s bill to the House Judiciary B Committee, which deals with criminal laws. The committee is led by Rep. Kevin Horan, a Republican from Grenada who is also a criminal defense attorney.

Horan said he doesn’t remember the bill or recall anyone approaching him about it, so it would have easily fallen through the cracks during a chaotic legislative session. But the three-term lawmaker said he doesn’t think he would have advanced it out of committee even if someone had asked him to pass it.

“I can’t say that I would take it up,” Horan said. “I wouldn’t want to take it up in Judiciary B. I don’t have any appetite for it.”

Senate Appropriations Chairman Briggs Hopson, a Republican from Vicksburg who authored the bill doling out the money in attorneys’ fees, did not respond to a request for comment about the appropriation bill or whether he thinks the expenditure was a wise use of taxpayer dollars. Lawmakers routinely appropriate tax dollars each year to go toward various legal cases.

This article first appeared on Mississippi Today and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.

News from the South - Florida News Feed

Gen Xers mourn drowning death of The Cosby Show’s Theo actor Malcolm-Jamal Warner

Published

8 hours ago

July 21, 2025

Staff Editor

www.clickorlando.com – Corey Williams, Associated Press – 2025-07-21 16:30:00

SUMMARY: Malcolm-Jamal Warner, known for playing Theo Huxtable on the groundbreaking 1980s sitcom “The Cosby Show,” tragically died from accidental drowning in Costa Rica. The show, which aired from 1984 to 1992, was celebrated for positively portraying a Black family, resonating deeply with Generation X and Black audiences by reflecting their experiences and challenging racial stereotypes. Fans and community members expressed profound grief, describing Warner as a relatable figure and role model who shaped their childhoods and cultural memory. His death was unexpected, heightening the sense of loss felt by those who admired both his acting and activism.

Read the full article

The post Gen Xers mourn drowning death of The Cosby Show’s Theo actor Malcolm-Jamal Warner appeared first on www.clickorlando.com

News from the South - Arkansas News Feed

Trump tax law runs up deficit by $3.4T, throws 10 million off health insurance, CBO says

Published

9 hours ago

July 21, 2025

Staff Editor

arkansasadvocate.com – Jennifer Shutt – 2025-07-21 15:10:00

by Jennifer Shutt, Arkansas Advocate
July 21, 2025

WASHINGTON — Republicans’ “big, beautiful” law will add $3.394 trillion to deficits during the next decade and lead 10 million people to lose access to health insurance, according to an analysis released Monday by the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office.

The updated assessment of the sweeping tax and spending cuts law came weeks after nearly every GOP lawmaker voted to approve the legislation ahead of a self-imposed Fourth of July deadline. The law made permanent the 2017 tax cuts from President Donald Trump’s first term and provided billions to carry out his plans of mass deportations, an immigration crackdown and increased defense spending.

Maya MacGuineas, president of the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, wrote in a statement that it is “still hard to believe that policymakers just added $4 trillion to” deficits after Republican lawmakers “have spent months or years appropriately fuming about our unsustainable fiscal situation.”

“This is a dangerous game we are playing,” MacGuineas wrote. “It has been going on for years, and it was brought to new levels with this bill. And it is time to stop.”

CBO released numerous reports throughout the months-long process showing how various parts of the bill would affect federal spending and health care access, but the scorekeeper needed additional time to evaluate changes Republicans made during the last few days of debate.

The latest figures are similar to a preliminary report CBO released earlier this month projecting the final version of the package, which underwent considerable changes in the Senate, would likely lead to a $3.4 trillion increase in deficits between 2025 and 2034.

That total was significantly higher than the $2.4 trillion increase in deficits CBO expected the original House version of the bill would have had during the next decade.

Health spending to fall by more than $1 trillion

Republicans’ numerous changes to health programs, predominantly Medicaid, will reduce federal spending during the next decade by $1.058 trillion.

The law made more than a dozen changes to the state-federal health program for lower income individuals and certain people with disabilities, though some of those have larger budget impacts than others.

Language barring Medicaid spending from going to Planned Parenthood for one year would actually increase federal deficits during the 10-year window by $53 million.

The CBO score shows that policy change would decrease federal spending by $44 million this fiscal year and another $31 million during the next fiscal year, before increasing deficits by $91 million during fiscal year 2027 and continuing.

That section of the law is on hold for the moment after a federal judge issued a temporary restraining order earlier this month that required the Trump administration to continue paying Planned Parenthood for routine health care coverage for Medicaid enrollees.

Federal law for decades has barred the federal government from spending taxpayer dollars for abortion services with limited exceptions, so the one-year prohibition on Medicaid funding to Planned Parenthood would have blocked patients enrolled in the program from going to their clinics for routine health appointments, like annual physicals and cancer screenings.

The CBO report didn’t include a state-by-state breakdown of the effects of the health care changes in the law, but the agency is expected to release more detailed analysis of the health impacts in the coming weeks.

Nutrition assistance cuts

Apart from Medicaid, two large projected deficit reductions in the law come in the agriculture title’s sections on the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP.

A provision requiring states to pay for some portion of SNAP benefits starting in fiscal 2028 would save the federal government between $5.7 billion and $6 billion per year, totalling just less than $41 billion for the first seven years it will be in effect.

And new work requirements for SNAP would result in $68.6 billion less in federal spending over the 10 years starting in fiscal 2026, the CBO projected.

Federal student loan program

Republicans’ streamlining of the federal student loan program is projected to reduce federal spending in the next decade by $270.5 billion.

As part of a sweeping overhaul of higher education, the law limits repayment options for borrowers with any loans made on or after July 1, 2026, to either a standard repayment plan or an income-based repayment plan.

Extension and expansion of tax cuts

The extension of Trump’s 2017 tax law, plus new tax breaks, will cost $4.472 trillion over the next decade, according to the latest CBO score.

The United States collects the majority of its revenue from individual taxpayers, and the continuation of lowered income tax brackets, plus an increased standard deduction, will comprise the bulk of lost revenue over 10 years, adding up to $3.497 trillion.

Trump also campaigned on several other tax cut promises, including no tax on tips and overtime, as well as no tax on car loan interest. The temporary provisions come with stipulations and will end in 2029. Together they will cost $151.868 billion.

The child tax credit increases under the new law to $2,200, up from $2,000, though lawmakers did not increase the amount lower income families can receive as a tax refund. The CBO estimates the bumped-up tax credit will cost $626.345 billion over the next decade.

Lawmakers offset some costs of the bill by repealing clean energy tax credits, including ending tax credits for personal and commercial electric vehicles, nixing energy efficiency improvement credits for homeowners, and terminating clean electricity production credits. In all, Republicans saved $487.909 billion from axing the measures meant to address the effects of climate change.

Jacob Fischler, Shauneen Miranda and Ashley Murray contributed to this report.

Last updated 3:15 p.m., Jul. 21, 2025

Arkansas Advocate is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Arkansas Advocate maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Sonny Albarado for questions: info@arkansasadvocate.com.

The post Trump tax law runs up deficit by $3.4T, throws 10 million off health insurance, CBO says appeared first on arkansasadvocate.com

Note: The following A.I. based commentary is not part of the original article, reproduced above, but is offered in the hopes that it will promote greater media literacy and critical thinking, by making any potential bias more visible to the reader –Staff Editor.

Political Bias Rating: Center-Right

This article presents detailed coverage of a major Republican-backed tax and spending bill, emphasizing its fiscal impact and policy changes with largely factual language. The inclusion of critical analysis from nonpartisan sources like the Congressional Budget Office and fiscal watchdog groups highlights the bill’s substantial deficit increase and effects on health care and social programs, which may be viewed critically by fiscal conservatives and progressives alike. The tone is measured and focused on the legislative and budgetary consequences without overt editorializing, aligning the piece with a center-right bias that reports GOP initiatives seriously but notes associated criticisms and trade-offs.

News from the South - Georgia News Feed

Atlanta rapper Ca$h Out sentenced | FOX 5 News

Published

10 hours ago

July 21, 2025

Staff Editor

www.youtube.com – FOX 5 Atlanta – 2025-07-21 14:50:49

SUMMARY: Atlanta rapper Ca$h Out, identified as John Michael Hakee Gibson, was sentenced following a trial involving severe crimes. He received multiple life sentences and decades-long imprisonments for charges including rape, aggravated sodomy, trafficking persons for sexual servitude, violation of the Georgia RICO Act, and related offenses. Additional penalties include possession of firearms during felonies, pimping, pandering, obstruction of law enforcement, and possession of prohibited items in prison. He must register as a sex offender and avoid contact with victims and specified Atlanta locations. The court emphasized the gravity of the offenses reflecting heinous behavior towards victims.

Atlanta rapper Ca$h Out, his mother and his cousin learn their sentences in a Fulton County courtroom.

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