Two Democratic lawmakers are suing the state following Gov. Phil Bryant’s mid-year budget cuts of public schools.
The lawsuit, filed by the Southern Poverty Law Center on behalf of Rep. Bryant Clark and Sen. John Horhn, says the nearly $20 million in cuts to school districts Gov. Bryant ordered violates the state constitution.
“The Mississippi Constitution forbids any branch of government from exercising another branch’s core powers,” said Will Bardwell, SPLC senior staff attorney. “Decisions about the state budget must be made by the Legislature alone. When Gov. Bryant interfered with the Legislature’s (public school funding) appropriation, he not only shortchanged Mississippi schoolchildren—he violated the Constitution.”
A request for comment from Gov. Bryant was not returned Thursday.
Gov. Phil Bryant ordered several rounds of budget cuts this fiscal year, which ends June 30, but cuts announced in February and March were the first to affect the Mississippi Adequate Education Program (MAEP). In Mississippi, education funding is broken up into Mississippi Adequate Education Program (MAEP), the bulk of the money school districts receive, and non-MAEP programs funded by additional appropriations by the Legislature.
The lawsuit is asking the Hinds County Chancery Court to strike down the statute under which Bryant enacted the cuts and to repay the money. In addition, the SPLC is asking the court to issue a preliminary injunction that would prevent the budget cuts from taking effect while the lawsuit plays out.
The case is assigned to Chancery Judge William Singletary.
Singletary recently ruled in a separate lawsuit filed by 21 school districts and former Gov. Ronnie Musgrove that the Legislature is not required to fully fund the Mississippi Adequate Education Program every year. Musgrove appealed the decision, and the Mississippi Supreme Court heard oral arguments in that case on Wednesday.
Republish our articles for free, online or in print, under a Creative Commons license.
Republish this article
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
- Look for the "Republish This Story" button underneath each story. To republish online, simply click the button, copy the html code and paste into your Content Management System (CMS).
- Editorial cartoons and photo essays are not included under the Creative Commons license and therefore do not have the "Republish This Story" button option. To learn more about our cartoon syndication services, click here.
- You can’t edit our stories, except to reflect relative changes in time, location and editorial style.
- You can’t sell or syndicate our stories.
- Any web site our stories appear on must include a contact for your organization.
- If you share our stories on social media, please tag us in your posts using @MSTODAYnews on Facebook and @MSTODAYnews on Twitter.
- You have to credit Mississippi Today. We prefer “Author Name, Mississippi Today” in the byline. If you’re not able to add the byline, please include a line at the top of the story that reads: “This story was originally published by Mississippi Today” and include our website, mississippitoday.org.
- You can’t edit our stories, except to reflect relative changes in time, location and editorial style.
- You cannot republish our editorial cartoons, photographs, illustrations or graphics without specific permission (contact our managing editor Kayleigh Skinner for more information). To learn more about our cartoon syndication services, click here.
- Our stories may appear on pages with ads, but not ads specifically sold against our stories.
- You can’t sell or syndicate our stories.
- You can only publish select stories individually — not as a collection.
- Any web site our stories appear on must include a contact for your organization.
- If you share our stories on social media, please tag us in your posts using @MSTODAYnews on Facebook and @MSTODAYnews on Twitter.
It’s about time.