Attorney General Garland’s Department of Justice has launched a court challenge to a new Mississippi law that cracks down on rampant crime at the state capitol of Jackson, saying the law discriminates against the city’s overwhelmingly Black majority. Black lawmakers have labeled the law a “modern-day Jim Crow,” while white lawmakers say it’s essential for public safety. 

The law in question, H.B. 1020, creates a special judicial district in a neighborhood of Jackson that is whiter and more affluent than other areas. Judges in the district will be appointed by the white chief justice of the state supreme court instead of elected by the majority Black voters. Jackson is more than 80 percent Black.

The law also expands the boundaries of the Capital Complex Improvement District, a region that encompasses most state-owned properties in the city and creates an “inferior court,” which has more limited jurisdiction but can hear any cases within the district’s boundaries. With amendments, H.B. 1020 passed by 34-to-15 vote in the state senate on party lines and 75 to 45 in the Mississippi house, with five Democrats voting for it. The governor of Mississippi, Tate Reeves, signed the bill into law in April. 

Through the new legislation, the state aims to alleviate some of the burden on the local government to fight crime in the CCID, freeing up resources for other parts of the city.

In a motion last week, the Department of Justice announced it would support a suit from the NAACP. The group argues that the bill violates the Equal Protection Clause, as it allows for white statewide officers and a white state Supreme Court justice to appoint new officials at Hinds County, where 70 percent of the population is Black, and also uses tax dollar money to benefit a region containing the whiter and more affluent neighborhood in Jackson.

A state representative, Edmund Blackmon, told the Mississippi Clarion Ledger that a lot of the neighborhoods in the CCID “capture about 85 percent of the white population.” In an April statement, the Legal Defense Fund also called out the discrepancy, saying that the bill “gives state officials extensive power in a geographic carve-out of Jackson that includes the city’s long-established majority white neighborhoods.”

The racial tension underpinning Mississippi politics has further inflamed opposition: The justice department notes that Mississippi has yet to elect a Black statewide official, despite having a 40-percent Black population. Black leaders in Mississippi tend to be at the local level since the Republican Party has a supermajority in the house and senate.

Republican lawmakers, including Governor Reeves, have defended the bill as an effort to crack down on a crime-ridden Jackson, where the homicide rate in 2022 was roughly 92 for every 100,000 people — the highest in the nation, far surpassing Baltimore’s 58 and St. Louis’s 68 for every 100,000 residents, according to a local Jackson station, WLBT. 

“There is a clear consensus that more law enforcement boots on the ground are needed in Jackson, especially given that the city’s police department has chronically been understaffed by at least a hundred officers,” Mr. Reeves said in a statement.

The new appointees will help reduce backlog after aid apportioned to the district from the Cares Act and American Rescue Plan proved insufficient, a state representative, Trey Lamar, writes for the Magnolia Tribune. 

Democratic opponents of the bill have said it takes law enforcement out of the hands of local residents by empowering white state judges to appoint officials. Mississippi house Democrats said the bill indicates that Republicans have “chosen the legacy of white supremacy over respect and equity.”

“What Republicans tell you is the decay of Jackson at the hands of its Black elected leaders is really just what modern-day Jim Crow Mississippi looks like,” the Mississippi house Democrats said in a statement following the bill’s initial passage in February.

A Democratic state representative, Daryl Porter, who voted against the bill, tells the Sun he is “pleased” that there is an “independent party” looking into the bill. Mr. Porter said he believes the legislation appointing additional judges and prosecutors will not be effective in reducing the backlog, since the city has already tried to appoint more officials.

“They were already appointed, especially in an effort to help with the backlog of cases, and there still was a backlog,” he said, adding that he believes the funding for the bill should go toward the crime lab so that cases can efficiently come to trial. 

Responding to allegations that the bill is a new “Jim Crow,” Mr. Reeves said in a statement that “all decisions by the newly created inferior court can be reviewed without deference by elected county and circuit court judges,” and that the bill also provides additional resources for the elected Hinds County district attorney.

“Jackson has to be better,” Mr. Reeves said. “Downtown Jackson should be so safe that it is a magnet for talented young people to come and live and work and create.”

A Hinds County chancery court judge declined to block the bill from becoming law, but Mississippi Today reports that a federal judge, Henry Wingate, issued a temporary restraining order on the bill but has yet to decide whether the DOJ has standing to intervene.