JACKSON — A handful of Democrats on Wednesday showed dissatisfaction with Mississippi’s Republican-dominated legislative process by conducting filibusters with long-winded readings of bills.
One freshman Democrat got a temporary restraining order against Republican Speaker Philip Gunn after the House used a computerized voice for speed reading.
Rep. Jay Hughes of Oxford said in his court complaint against Gunn that bills were being read “so quickly that no human ear nor mind can comprehend the words.”
Hinds County Circuit Judge Winston Kidd issued a temporary order saying bills must be read “in a normal speed.” Gunn criticized Hughes, a fellow attorney, and said any lawmaker who wants to read a bill can do so on a state-provided computer.
“This whole stunt, the TRO, is simply an attempt to keep us from doing the work of the people,” Gunn told reporters. “And I’m not going to stand for it. We’re going to do the work of the people.”
A few Democrats in the House and two in the Senate demanded to have bills read aloud as a delay tactic most of Wednesday, saying they think the Republican supermajority is ignoring Democrats’ ideas.
“Only those bills that have been blessed by the leadership are coming out of committees,” Sen. Barbara Blackmon, D-Canton, told reporters to explain why she was having bills read in the Senate.
Blackmon said she believes the Senate Judiciary A Committee meeting was improperly called Tuesday. A schedule showed the committee was to meet after the Senate adjourned for the day, but the meeting was held when the Senate took a break. Blackmon made the same argument during the meeting Tuesday, but Chairman Sean Tindell, R-Gulfport, said he believed he had properly convened the meeting.
Senate Judiciary A passed a bill during that meeting that says state officials, private business owners and others who provide services to the public couldn’t be punished for acting on religious beliefs that marriage should only be between a man and a woman. The bill, backed by religious conservatives and House Republican leaders, was filed in response to the U.S. Supreme Court decision that made same-sex marriage legal nationwide. It is opposed by gay-rights groups, including Human Rights Campaign.
“People have the constitutional right to freely exercise their religion. But that does not, and never has been, an excuse to discriminate on the taxpayers’ dime,” Rob Hill, Human Rights Campaign’s Mississippi director, said Wednesday.
Tindell said Tuesday that he wanted the committee to pass the bill without changing it, and all amendments failed. If a bill passes both chambers in the same form, it goes to the governor. If one chamber changes a bill, the other must accept the changes or the bill goes into final negotiations, where it could stall.
Blackmon said it is unfair to legislators, and their constituents, for a chairman to try to block amendments to divisive legislation.
The House filibuster was to protest a bill to widen control of the Jackson airport to a regional board. The fight over the airport bill was one thing that pushed the House to the February standoff, which ended with an agreement between Republican and Democratic leaders.
Rep. Christopher Bell, D-Jackson, said Democrats understood that Republican leaders would let the bill die as part of the agreement. Gunn said that was never part of the deal.
“The city of Jackson is under attack from individuals in Madison and Rankin counties,” Bell said.
Jackson is majority-black and has a black mayor and majority-black City Council. Madison and Rankin counties, in the Jackson suburbs, are majority-white.
Rep. Ed Blackmon, D-Canton, said Democrats would fight the bill.
“This is just a land grab by the state of Mississippi,” said Rep. Blackmon, the husband of Sen. Blackmon. “What state government tells a city that the elected officials are incapable of governing?”
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