For some time now, Mississippi has operated under the illusion that we have a government that relies on the rule of law.
In truth, our state is governed by an unholy trinity of powerful politicians: the Speaker of the Mississippi House, the Lt. Gov. who runs the Mississippi Senate and the Governor. Virtually nothing happens that does not meet their approval. In the absence of an independent judiciary, there are no checks and balances to retrain the power of these three men, Speaker Philip Gunn, Lt. Gov. Delbert Hosemann and Gov. Tate Reeves.
Since May 2021, Mississippi citizens have had no direct means of curbing the excesses foisted upon them after the state’s Supreme Court eliminated the right of citizens to amend the state constitution at the ballot box.
It’s not supposed to work that way. Not at all.
The most recent example of the state’s concentrated power has unfolded in the days since the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that there is no right to an abortion in the U.S. Constitution and that the legality of abortion rests in the hands of each state — probably the biggest state’s rights ruling in our nation’s history.
To further illustrate Mississippi’s disdain for the rule of law, let’s look at how two conservative states responded in the aftermath of the Supreme Court’s ruling — Mississippi and Kansas.
The Kansas constitution, like Mississippi’s, protects the right to an abortion.
Tuesday, during its primary election, Kansas voters overwhelmingly rejected a measure that would have amended the state’s constitution to virtually ban all abortions in the state. The Kansas Legislature, which is also dominated by conservative Republicans, tried to put a thumb on the scale, placing the abortion ban amendment not on the November general election ballot, but on Tuesday’s primary ballot. Historically, Republican turnout in Kansas is twice as large as Democrats in the primaries. That ploy didn’t work. Yesterday, Kansas voters emphatically rejected the amendment by a 22-point margin.
Regardless of the outcome, that’s the way a state government should operate. If there’s something you don’t like in the state constitution, let the people decide whether or not to change the constitution.
That was not Mississippi’s approach.
Mississippi was ready to move when the Supreme Court’s ruling came down, having already passed “trigger law” legislation that made abortion illegal in the state as soon as Roe. v. Wade was overturned.
One problem. The trigger law violated the state’s own Constitution, based on a 1998 ruling by the state Supreme Court that said Mississippians have a legal right to abortions.
The state’s lone abortion clinic asked for a temporary restraining order, noting the trigger law violated the state constitution. The case was shopped around to find a chancery judge sympathetic to the ban on abortions. On July 5, special judge Debbra Halford rejected the request for a restraining order until the case could be heard by the state Supreme Court, saying it was likely that the current state Supreme Court will uphold the Mississippi trigger law banning most abortions in the wake of the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling.
A first-year law school student would immediately recognize the absurdity of Halford’s reasoning. First, the U.S. Supreme Court went to lengths to note that their ruling does not prevent individual states from determining the issue.
Second, Halford’s ruling relied almost entirely on speculation about what the state Supreme Court would do rather than any legal precedent.
The fix was in. The clinic’s attorneys dropped the suit after Halford’s ruling, sensing the inevitable, no doubt.
That ruling does establish one precedent, though. It says the quiet part out loud. When our state’s rulers don’t like something in the state constitution, they can simply ignore it.
Unlike Kansans, we are powerless to stop them.
This time, it’s abortion. Next time? Who knows.
Slim Smith is a columnist and feature writer for The Dispatch. His email address is ssmith@cdispatch.com.
Slim Smith is a columnist and feature writer for The Dispatch. His email address is ssmith@cdispatch.com.
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