A Republican-backed Mississippi Supreme Court justice who in 2021 voted to kill the state’s citizen-led ballot initiative system lost her seat after voters rejected her at the ballot box last Tuesday.
Public defender David Sullivan defeated Justice Dawn Beam in the Nov. 5 election for the Mississippi Supreme Court District 2 place 2 seat. Beam, who has served on the court since 2016, is the first justice to face the voters after joining the court’s majority that killed the ballot-initiative system and a voter-adopted medical-marijuana program in 2021.
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Public defender David Sullivan defeated Justice Dawn Beam in the Nov. 5 election for the Mississippi Supreme Court District 2 position 2 seat. Courtesy David Sullivan for Mississippi Supreme Court campaign ” data-medium-file=”https://i0.wp.com/www.mississippifreepress.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/11/David-Sullivan_courtesy.jpg?fit=300%2C200&ssl=1″ data-large-file=”https://i0.wp.com/www.mississippifreepress.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/11/David-Sullivan_courtesy.jpg?fit=780%2C519&ssl=1″ src=”https://i0.wp.com/www.mississippifreepress.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/11/David-Sullivan_courtesy.jpg?resize=780%2C519&ssl=1″ alt class=”wp-image-49456″ srcset=”https://i0.wp.com/www.mississippifreepress.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/11/David-Sullivan_courtesy.jpg?resize=1024%2C682&ssl=1 1024w, https://i0.wp.com/www.mississippifreepress.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/11/David-Sullivan_courtesy.jpg?resize=300%2C200&ssl=1 300w, https://i0.wp.com/www.mississippifreepress.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/11/David-Sullivan_courtesy.jpg?resize=768%2C512&ssl=1 768w, https://i0.wp.com/www.mississippifreepress.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/11/David-Sullivan_courtesy.jpg?resize=1536%2C1024&ssl=1 1536w, https://i0.wp.com/www.mississippifreepress.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/11/David-Sullivan_courtesy.jpg?resize=1200%2C800&ssl=1 1200w, https://i0.wp.com/www.mississippifreepress.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/11/David-Sullivan_courtesy.jpg?resize=1568%2C1045&ssl=1 1568w, https://i0.wp.com/www.mississippifreepress.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/11/David-Sullivan_courtesy.jpg?resize=400%2C267&ssl=1 400w, https://i0.wp.com/www.mississippifreepress.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/11/David-Sullivan_courtesy.jpg?w=2000&ssl=1 2000w, https://i0.wp.com/www.mississippifreepress.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/11/David-Sullivan_courtesy-1024×682.jpg?w=370&ssl=1 370w” sizes=”(max-width: 780px) 100vw, 780px”>Public defender David Sullivan defeated Justice Dawn Beam in the Nov. 5 election for the Mississippi Supreme Court District 2 position 2 seat. Courtesy David Sullivan for Mississippi Supreme Court campaign
In 2020, after citizens gathered enough signatures to put the issue on the ballot, Mississippi voters adopted the expansive medical-marijuana program known as Initiative 65 by a 68% to 31% vote. Madison, Miss., Mayor Mary Hawkins Butler sued to stop the program, saying that she wanted to keep “pot shops” out of her city.
Even though the right to citizen-led ballot initiatives is enshrined in Section 273 of the Mississippi Constitution, Butler and other opponents pointed to a loophole: the ballot-initiative system, adopted in 1992, requires that citizens collect a certain number of signatures from each of the state’s five congressional districts. But Mississippi lost a congressional district after the 2000 Census because of population decline and now only has four congressional districts, making it impossible to gather signatures from five.
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Six of Mississippi’s nine Supreme Court justices, including Beam, took a literal approach to
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