by Devna Bose and Taylor Vance, Mississippi Today
July 21, 2025

A federal judge has temporarily paused enforcement of the state law that prohibits diversity, equity and inclusion programs from Mississippi public schools and universities.

U.S. District Judge Henry Wingate on Sunday approved the request for a temporary restraining order sought by a coalition of civil rights and legal organizations on behalf of students, parents and educators.

The American Civil Liberties Union and the Mississippi Center for Justice are representing the plaintiffs, who filed the lawsuit alongside other groups on June 9 against the state’s education boards. Wingate heard arguments on June 24 from top lawyers from both organizations, as well as Special Assistant Attorney General Rex Shannon, who represented the state-agency defendants. 

Shannon objected to the temporary restraining order in court and argued the plaintiffs didn’t have legal standing to file the lawsuit. He also admitted his office was limited in the arguments it could make because of the litigation’s compressed schedule.

The order is in effect for 14 days, and allows Wingate to extend it for an additional 14 days. Next, the plaintiffs plan to seek a preliminary injunction — a longer-lasting court order that would continue to freeze the state law. 

The state could appeal Wingate’s decision to the U.S. 5th Circuit Court of Appeals, though it’s unclear if they will do so.

“In this Court’s eye, these accounts appear to reflect a broad, chilling effect across public institutions and community organizations,” Wingate wrote in his order, of individual reports about the impact of the bill. “The evidence, at this stage, demonstrates a clear and ongoing deprivation of constitutional rights in a manner not compensable by money damages — thus warranting injunctive relief.”

In April, legislators passed House Bill 1193, which prevents public schools from creating diversity, equity and inclusion offices, engaging in “divisive” concepts and hiring people based on their race, sex, color or national origin. The State Board of Education and the Institutions of Higher Learning recently approved policies that create a complaint and investigation process for violations to the law. 

Local school boards have to create their own policies, too, which MCJ attorney Rob McDuff argued in court would be a lengthy and arduous process. 

“This statute would throw our schools into chaos if it’s allowed to go forward,” he said. “As we approach the fall semester, teachers are preparing their lesson plans … people need to know that at least for the moment, enforcement of this law is going to stop while the court further considers the issues.”

Joshua Tom, ACLU of Mississippi’s legal director, said the law’s vagueness was unconstitutional. 

“‘Engage’ is not defined,” he said. “How does a teacher or student ‘engage’? Do a mandatory reading? Talk about it in class? What if they go on a field trip and one of the concepts is introduced. Is that engaging? It’s not clear.”

He also noted that the statute was already making an impact — in an effort to comply with the law, the University of Mississippi withdrew its funding from Oxford’s annual Pride Parade a few weeks ago and prohibited university departments from marching in their capacity as professors, he said. 

Professors and school officials have publicly criticized the bill and asked for clarification about its enforcement. One top Jackson Public Schools official submitted questions asking if celebrating Black History Month or if one of the district’s core values, “equity,” would lead to compliance violations.

Both parties will be back in federal court on August 5 to make their cases about a preliminary injunction.

This article first appeared on Mississippi Today and is republished here under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

The post Federal judge temporarily blocks Mississippi's new DEI ban appeared first on mississippitoday.org

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-Left

This article from *Mississippi Today* maintains a factual tone but gives notable space and emphasis to the perspectives and arguments of civil rights groups and legal organizations opposing the DEI ban. It quotes extensively from ACLU and Mississippi Center for Justice representatives while offering less detail from the state’s defense. The framing highlights concerns about constitutional rights and the chilling effect of the law, signaling sympathy with the plaintiffs’ viewpoint. While it does report the state’s legal position, the focus and tone suggest a modest Center-Left bias in presentation.

by Devna Bose, Mississippi Today
July 18, 2025

Shelves half-filled with books lined the walls of the muggy Bailey APAC Middle School library, where a handful of volunteers assembled equipment, painted ceilings and sorted through boxes.

One volunteer, wiping sweat from his brow, was Errick L. Greene, superintendent of Jackson Public Schools.

Jackson Public Schools held its annual Beautification Day on Friday. The event brings community members into schools to help prepare them for the first day, just days away. Greene joined hundreds of volunteers across the city.

After all, he was the one who established the event when he arrived at the district in 2018 — a district that was facing a potential state takeover and had lost some trust from its community.

“There’s no way to revitalize a district and do the heavy lifting that we needed to do without some kind of spark,” he said. “We were looking for those sparks — painting a mural or planting some flowers or helping a teacher to set up a classroom. This was an effort to create some shared ownership in our schools.

“You want families to feel like this is their school, because it is.”

That shared responsibility is essential, especially as federal education funding wavers, Greene said. 

Voters had just approved a $65 million bond issue to pay for repairs and new classrooms in the district when Greene arrived in 2018. But he quickly realized Jackson Public Schools, which has many decades-old buildings, needed “two, three, maybe even four times more than that.”

“While I’m thankful, we’ve seen over time, the needs were just much, much, much greater,” he said. 

As the district focuses on taking its schools to the next level, Greene said, the state needs to continue consistently and fully funding education, and the community needs to keep supporting its schools at events like Beautification Day. 

Bailey in particular was humming with excitement on Friday morning. This year, students will be returning to the school’s original location where it was built in 1938. The school was closed for a few years while undergoing renovations, but in a few days, it will reopen as a 4th to 8th grade school after absorbing Wells APAC Elementary School.

For Rose Wright, a longtime history teacher at Bailey, it’s a homecoming.

“What I love about Beautification Day is that these are their children, and these parents are coming to help us help them,” she said, cutting decorations for her classroom. “I am just really excited to be at home.”

Outside in the sultry July heat, a group of dads dug up dead vines. Though it’s not his first time helping out during Beautification Day, Justin Cook, an attorney at the Mississippi Office of the State Public Defender, took off work this year to help prepare the school. He’s got two kids, a 5th grader and an 8th grader, who will learn in the new building.

“I thought it was important to do everything I could to make the transition easier,” he said. “Obviously, there’s going to be hiccups, and whatever we can do as parents and stakeholders to have that growing pains be as minimal as possible is essential.”

Events like Beautification Day, Greene said, don’t just deepen the relationship between the community and the district. They also show students that the community is invested in them, which is integral to their success. 

“I grew up in Flint, Michigan, and so I know what it means to be in a community that is kind of dismissed,” he said. “I’ve found that here, there’s a great deal of pride — even where we as a school district had not delivered. The fact that we even have this kind of activity absolutely signals to young people that people care about you.”

Students roamed the school grounds and hallways, stepping around wood planks and cardboard boxes, peering into their new classrooms.

Kayley Willis, who will be in the 5th grade at Bailey this year, saw her school for the first time on Friday morning and explored the building with friends Anasia Hunter and Farah Malembeka, both rising 6th graders. 

“It makes us feel proud that we actually have people who care about the school enough to come down here and help out,” Hunter said. “It really feels like they care.”

This article first appeared on Mississippi Today and is republished here under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

The post ‘This is their school.’ Hundreds of volunteers prepare JPS schools for first day appeared first on mississippitoday.org

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-Left

This article from *Mississippi Today* emphasizes themes of community involvement, local investment in public education, and the value of public schools, which are typically associated with center-left priorities. It portrays Jackson Public Schools Superintendent Errick L. Greene positively, highlighting grassroots efforts like Beautification Day without criticism or opposing viewpoints. While the tone is optimistic and focused on civic pride, it also subtly underscores the need for increased public funding and support from the state, reinforcing progressive concerns about underfunded schools. The reporting is factual but framed with a community-oriented, pro-public education perspective.

by Caleb Bedillion, The Marshall Project and Anna Wolfe, Mississippi Today
July 18, 2025

Tangled finances, thousands in personal loans and a political contribution from a supposed investor group made up of undercover FBI informants — this was all contained in a months-late campaign finance report from Hinds County District Attorney Jody Owens. 

Owens, a second-term Democrat in Mississippi’s capital city region, is fighting federal bribery charges, to which he’s pleaded not guilty. At the same time, his recent campaign finance disclosure reflects a pair of transactions that correspond with key details in the government’s allegation that Owens took money from undercover informants to pay off a local official’s debt.

Regarding payments from Facility Solutions Team — the company name used in the FBI sting — to former Jackson City Councilwoman Angelique Lee, Owens allegedly stated the need to “clean it out,” according to the indictment, which was unsealed in November.

“[L]ike we always do, we’ll put it in a campaign account, or directly wire it,” he said, the indictment claims. “[T]hat’s the only way I want the paper trail to look.”

Agents recorded hundreds of hours of conversations with Owens and other officials, and after his arraignment last year, Owens responded to the charges, saying, “The cherry-picked statements of drunken locker room banter is not a crime.”

Throughout 2024, a non-election year during which federal authorities allege Owens funneled thousands of dollars in bribes to Jackson’s city officials, Owens loaned his campaign more than $20,000, according to his campaign committee’s finance report. He’d won reelection in late 2023.

Owens and his attorneys did not respond to questions about his campaign finance report.

Owens’ report, filed May 30 – months late and riddled with errors – is the latest example of how Mississippi politicians can ignore the state’s campaign finance transparency laws while avoiding meaningful consequences. It’s a lax legal environment that has led to late and illegible reports, untraceable out-of-state money that defied contribution limits, and, according to federal authorities, public corruption with campaign finance accounts serving as piggy banks. 

Enforcement duties are divided among many government bodies, including the Mississippi Ethics Commission. The commission’s executive director, Tom Hood, has long complained that the state’s campaign finance laws are confusing and ineffective.

“It’s just a mess,” Hood said.

Owens filed the annual report months past the Jan. 31 deadline, after reporting from The Marshall Project – Jackson revealed he had failed to do so. He paid a $500 fine in April.

He was also late filing in previous years, paying fines in some years and failing to pay the penalties in other years, according to records provided by the Ethics Commission.

The report, which Owens signed, is full of omissions or miscalculations, with no way to tell which is which. The cover sheet of the report provides the total amount of itemized contributions and disbursements for the year — $44,000 in and $36,500 out. But the body of the report lists the line-by-line itemizations for each, and when the Marshall Project – Jackson and Mississippi Today summed the individual itemizations, the totals didn’t match those on the cover sheet.

Based on the itemized spending detailed in the body of the report, Owens’ campaign should have thousands more in cash on hand than reported. In the report’s cover sheet, Owens also reported that he received more in itemized contributions during the year than he received in total contributions, which would be impossible to do.

While the secretary of state receives and maintains campaign finance reports, it has no obligation to review the reports and no authority to investigate their accuracy. Under state law, willfully filing a false campaign finance report is a misdemeanor. Charges, however, are rare.

Owens is the only local official in the federal bribery probe — which is set to go to trial next summer — who remains in office. The government alleged that Owens accepted $125,000 to split between him and two associates in late 2023 from a group of men he believed were vying for a development project in downtown Jackson. Owens accepted several thousand dollars more to funnel to public officials for their support of the project, the indictment alleges. The use of campaign accounts was an important feature of the alleged scheme, according to the indictment.

Owens divvied up $50,000 from Facility Solutions Team, or FST, into checks from various individuals or companies — allegedly meant to conceal the bribe — to former Jackson Mayor Chokwe Lumumba’s reelection campaign, the indictment charged. 

Lumumba accepted the checks during a sunset cruise on a yacht in South Florida, the indictment alleged. His campaign finance report, filed earlier this year, reflected five $10,000 contributions near the date of the trip, with no mention of FST.

Lumumba, who lost reelection in April, has pleaded not guilty. 

While the indictment accused Owens of saying that public officials use campaign accounts to finance their personal lives, state law prohibits the use of political contributions for personal use. 

The indictment alleges Owens accepted $60,000 — some for the purpose of funneling to local politicians — from the men representing themselves as FST in the backroom of Owens’ cigar bar on Feb. 13, 2024. On his campaign finance report, he listed a $12,500 campaign contribution from FST two days later, the same day the indictment alleges he paid off $10,000 of former Councilwoman Lee’s campaign debt. Lee pleaded guilty to charges related to the alleged bribery scheme in 2024. 

Also on Feb. 15, 2024, the campaign finance report Owens filed shows a $10,000 payment to 1Vision, a printing company that used to go by the name A2Z Printing, for the purpose of “debt retirement.” Lee had her city paycheck garnished starting in 2023 to pay off debts to A2Z Printing, according to media reports. No mention of Lee was made in the campaign finance report filed by Owens. The printing company did not respond to requests for comment.

Campaigns are allowed to contribute money to other campaigns or political action committees. If Owens’ committee used campaign funds to pay off debt owed by Lee’s campaign, the transaction should have been structured as a contribution to Lee’s campaign and reported as such by both campaigns, said Sam Begley, a Jackson-based attorney and election law expert who has advised candidates about their financial disclosures.

The alleged debt payoff on behalf of Lee is not the first time Owens has described transactions on his campaign finance filings in ways that may obscure how his campaign is spending money. Confusing or unclear descriptions of spending activity are common on campaign finance reports across the state.

Owens previously reported that in 2023, he paid $1,275 to a staff member in the district attorney’s office who also worked on his campaign. The payment was labeled a reimbursement, which Owens explained in a May email to The Marshall Project – Jackson was for expenditures this person made on behalf of the campaign, “such as meals for volunteers/workers, evening/weekend canvassers, and election day workers.”

State law requires campaigns to itemize all contributions and expenses over $200. Begley said he believes Owens’ committee should have itemized any payments over $200 made by anyone on behalf of the campaign. 

Upfront payments, with the expectation of repayment by the campaign, might also be considered a loan, according to a spokesperson for the secretary of state. Campaigns are barred from spending money to repay undocumented loans.

The state Ethics Commission has addressed undocumented loan repayments in several opinions, outlining the required documentation to make repayments legal.

Since 2018, the Ethics Commission has had the power to issue advisory opinions upon request to help candidates and campaigns sort through laws that Hood, the commission’s executive director, said aren’t always clear.

The commission has issued just six opinions in seven years.

“I was surprised in the first few years that there weren’t more,” Hood said. “But now it seems to be clear that for whatever reason, most people don’t think they need advice.”

This article first appeared on Mississippi Today and is republished here under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

The post Indicted Jackson prosecutor's latest campaign finance report rife with errors appeared first on mississippitoday.org

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-Left

The article critically examines the conduct of Hinds County District Attorney Jody Owens, a Democrat, and highlights systemic weaknesses in Mississippi’s campaign finance laws. While the reporting is grounded in factual evidence, legal documents, and expert commentary, the tone leans toward exposing flaws in enforcement and transparency—issues typically emphasized by center-left or reform-oriented journalism. The article does not display partisan rhetoric or ideological framing beyond its focus on accountability and legal integrity. Its publication by Mississippi Today and The Marshall Project, both known for investigative work with slight progressive leanings, further supports a Center-Left classification.