Mississippi House Bill 1020 is “racially discriminatory” because it shifts “authority over the county’s criminal justice system away from democratically-elected judges and prosecutors elected by Black voters,” the U.S. Department of Justice said today as it filed a complaint in federal court.
“Mississippi state lawmakers have adopted a crude scheme that singles out and discriminates against Black residents in the City of Jackson and Hinds County,” Assistant Attorney General Kristen Clarke of the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division said in a statement this afternoon. “Our complaint alleges that Mississippi has violated the U.S. Constitution by creating a new, two-tiered system of justice—which erodes the authority of Black elected local officials and creates a new system to be led by judges and prosecutors hand-picked and appointed by state officials.”
H.B. 1020 gives the white Mississippi Supreme Court chief justice, Michael K. Randolph, the power to appoint unelected judges to serve in majority-Black Hinds County, where the capital City of Jackson is located. Under the law, the chief justice would appoint four new judges to serve in the Hinds County Circuit Court until 2026 and one permanent municipal judge to serve in the Capitol Complex Improvement District. Mississippi Attorney General Lynn Fitch, who is also white, would appoint special two prosecutors in the new CCID court.
Read the U.S. Justice Department’s complaint against H.B. 1020.
Legislative leaders said during debate over H.B. 1020 that their goal was to make Jackson safer and fight crime. Opponents of the law have long argued that the appointments will take power away from mostly-Black locally elected circuit court judges and diminish Black voters’ power in Hinds County. Hinds County is 70% Black, and Jackson is 80% Black.
“This thinly-veiled state takeover is intended to strip power, voice and resources away from Hinds County’s predominantly-Black electorate, singling out the majority Black Hinds County for adverse treatment imposed on no other voters in the State of Mississippi,” Clarke said in today’s statement. “The Civil Rights Division of the Department of Justice remains committed to identifying and challenging all acts of discrimination targeting Black communities.”
With its complaint, the
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