Brett Favre will remain a defendant in the State of Mississippi’s civil lawsuit designed to recover millions in misspent welfare funds, the Mississippi Supreme Court decided in an order Wednesday. The former NFL quarterback had asked the court to dismiss him from the case.
“After due consideration, the panel finds the petition for interlocutory appeal should be denied. IT IS THEREFORE ORDERED that Brett Favre’s Petition for Interlocutory Appeal is hereby denied,” the short order says, without explaining the court’s reasoning.
Favre is one of dozens of defendants in the lawsuit. The Mississippi Department of Human Services’ lawsuit is suing him for millions, including over $5 million in welfare funds that were spent on a volleyball stadium; $1.7 million to the company Prevacus for the development of a concussion drug he was invested in; and $1.1 million that a nonprofit used Temporary Assistance For Needy Families funds to pay him to give speeches and record ads.
Favre returned the funds he received for the speeches in 2021 (though he denies that he failed to complete the terms of the agreement), but did not pay $228,000 in interest that the state auditor said he owed. He has denied knowing the funds either for the speeches or for the stadium or drug company came from welfare funds. Despite being a defendant in the civil case, he is not a criminal defendant and neither state nor federal investigators have accused him of a crime.
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“As noted, MDHS does not—because it cannot—allege that Favre understood that using ‘grant funds’ for the (volleyball) center would involve TANF funds: ‘grant funds’ can mean many things, and there is nothing unusual about state officials using ‘grant funds’ to build a public project,” Favre’s attorneys wrote in a May 15, 2023, filing asking the Mississippi Supreme Court to dismiss him from the case. The filing also noted that MDHS “does not allege that Favre had any authority to direct or approve the funds’ use or that he was aware that the Prevacus transaction involved TANF funds.”
In response to Favre’s petition for dismissal on May 30, attorneys for
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