Shadrack White says his work with the Mississippi Justice Institute is about fighting to protect the rights of others.
White, director for the institute, spoke to the Starkville Rotary Club Monday about what his organization does.
“We’re a nonprofit organization, and we represent people in court when their rights have been taken away,” White said.
As an example, White pointed to a case MJI is currently involved in on behalf of two men who want to start a taxi company in Jackson. He said the city of Jackson has placed strict regulations on starting new cab companies in the city, such as having at least eight taxis to start, requiring that an office be located in the city, having a dispatcher on duty 24 hours a day and other requirements.
Those requirements would make it impossible for the new company to start, and MJI has represented them in their case against the city.
“We found out the city of Jackson is not really enforcing these same regulations on the existing cab companies,” White said. “So in case you’re following along, there’s some city councilmen with some buddies in the existing cab companies, who have built some rules to protect them from competition, and we just think that’s unfair.
“We see things like that happening in little pockets occasionally around Mississippi,” he added. “For folks like our cab drivers, without us, they just sort of have to take it, and that’s the end of their business plan.”
White said MJI doesn’t charge its clients for representing them. As a nonprofit organization, the institute relies on donations for its work.
He also spoke about a case that’s gone to the Supreme Court of Mississippi, where MJI is representing parents of a charter school in Jackson against a lawsuit from the Southern Poverty Law Center.
In other instances, White said, the Mississippi Justice Institute’s work has helped prevent lawsuits before they started. He pointed to an example of a high school football coach who baptized some of his players on private property and was being threatened with a lawsuit by the Freedom From Religion Foundation until MJI sent a letter to saying it was willing to represent the coach in the event of litigation.
“We’ve got five real pieces of litigation in the courtroom,” he said. “We’ve got a bunch more where we wrote a letter to somebody or talked them off the ledge — essentially cut off litigation before it happened,” White said.
The Mississippi Justice Institute, at the time under the leadership of Mike Hurst, successfully represented The Dispatch in the appeal by the City of Columbus of a Mississippi Ethics Commission decision before the Supreme Court last year.
Alex Holloway was formerly a reporter with The Dispatch.
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