About Us

The Mississippi Center for Justice opened its doors in 2003, giving Mississippi a critical capacity that it lacked for more than a decade:  a home grown, non-profit public interest law firm that pursues racial and economic justice through advocacy for systemic change. The Mississippi Center for Justice carries out its mission through a community lawyering approach that advances specific social justice campaigns in partnership with national and local organizations and community leaders.

The Mississippi Center for Justice has two offices in Mississippi, one in Jackson and one in Biloxi. Staffed by a team of attorneys, advocates and others, the Mississippi Center for Justice is dedicated to developing policies and strategies that combat discrimination and poverty throughout Mississippi. The Center engages the services of pro bono attorneys from across the United States. During 2007, pro bono attorneys gave more than 17,000 hours of their time assisting the Center and Mississippians on issues including FEMA housing transition, contractor fraud, predatory lending, foreclosure and more. To sustain and feed a pipeline for future services, the Center also cultivates law students through spring, summer and winter internships during which law students spend their time working in Mississippi and assisting the Center with its campaigns.

A ten-member board oversees the activities and financial standing of the Mississippi Center for Justice. Board members are Fred L. Banks, chair; Robert B. McDuff, vice chair; Isaac K. Byrd, Jr., treasurer; Suzanne Keys, secretary; Carol Burnett, Stacy Ferraro, Deborah McDonald, Brad Pigott, Carlton Reeves and Warren Yoder.

The traditional strategies of policy advocacy and litigation are vital components of the Mississippi Center for Justice’s community lawyering tool kit. Likewise, public education, outreach, community organizing, media advocacy and other forms of communication strategies that comprise successful campaigns are important tools as well. Since its inception, the Center has been at the forefront of policy battles on the state and federal levels to bring about systemic change that improves the social justice environment for all Mississippians. Examples of the Center’s successes on such issues include:

Making Safe and Affordable Housing a Hallmark of Hurricane Katrina Recovery – The Mississippi Center for Justice has been at the forefront of federal and state policy battles to restore safe and affordable housing to Hurricane Katrina’s most vulnerable survivors, including thousands of children. Immediately after the storm, the Center established a Katrina Recovery Office in Biloxi to handle individual housing matters as well as to monitor policy decisions in the recovery process.  Early recovery efforts lagged considerably, and it was not until December 2006 that the state announced its first plan for assistance targeting the needs of lower-income homeowners. The Center and its advocacy partners were instrumental in persuading state and local authorities to target those funds, and the Center launched further advocacy efforts to direct additional recovery funds to renters.

In 2007, the Center advocated for public housing residents on the Mississippi Gulf Coast threatened by a Mississippi Regional Housing Authority policy that proposed the demolition of much of the existing low-income public housing stock.  Five multi-family complexes were the subject of “disposition” applications pending before HUD, which, if approved, would have displaced hundreds of households. The Center subsequently negotiated a memorandum of understanding to protect the procedural and substantive rights of tenants during repair and reconstruction.  In January 2008, the Center conducted a survey of affected public housing residents that revealed substantial problems with the housing authority’s administration, including failure to remediate Katrina-related mold that especially endangered children and the elderly. 

In September 2007, when Gov. Barbour announced his plan to divert $600 million in federal housing aid to expand the port of Gulfport, the Center and its partners launched the People Before Ports Campaign to avert this egregious misdirection of funds targeted by Congress for low and moderate-income households. Although HUD Secretary Jackson granted the state’s request, he took the unusual step of noting that he was greatly troubled by this outcome and urged the governor to quickly focus on producing affordable housing for Katrina survivors.  Using its national media contacts, the Center was able to generate significant press that resulted in congressional attention and the Center attorney’s testimony at House oversight hearings. The Center continues to be at the forefront of efforts on the Coast to integrate grassroots organizing, public education and media advocacy into a legal and policy agenda that cuts across a broad range of recovery-related issues. 

Increasing Educational Opportunity  – Far too many of Mississippi’s children find their way into the “schoolhouse to jailhouse” pipeline. “Zero tolerance” school discipline policies in the state’s 150 school districts channel alarming numbers of children into youth courts and juvenile incarceration facilities with little or no recourse.  In 2003, a U.S. Department of Justice investigation report about intolerable conditions at the training schools became a springboard for action. In September 2003, the Center co-convened the first meeting of the Mississippi Coalition to Prevent Schoolhouse to Jailhouse. Through a combination of litigation strategies, media advocacy and legislative advocacy, the Center and its partners helped remediate unconstitutional conditions and achieve a substantial reduction in the number of children incarcerated. 

The Juvenile Justice Reform Act of 2005, which mandated community-based alternatives to incarceration in every county, was hailed by the Jackson Clarion-Ledger as the “most important legislation to emerge from the 2005 session.”  In 2006, a similar legislative advocacy effort by the Coalition resulted in enactment of the Mississippi Juvenile Delinquency Prevention Act, which provided significant funding for community-based incarceration alternatives, imposed training requirements for court-appointed juvenile public defenders, and set comprehensive standards for juvenile detention centers. 

The Center also worked with advocates, organizers and families to secure special education services for exceptional children, develop and publish information about the rights of children with disabilities, and to devise strategies that encourage schools to respond to the needs of exceptional students.  Finally, the Center developed persuasive messages to promote the importance of adequate and equitable funding for education.

Increasing Access to Medicaid  – In 2004, the Center scored one of its first legal victories in  Vinson v. Barbour, a federal court class action lawsuit that prevented 65,000 poverty level aged and disabled (PLAD) Mississippians from losing their Medicaid benefits. As a result of this litigation, aggressive media and policy advocacy by the Center, the Mississippi Health Advocacy Program (MHAP), AARP and other coalition partners, the Mississippi legislature passed legislation and the Governor signed into law a bill reinstating PLAD benefits. 

In 2005 and 2006, Mississippi enacted policy changes to Medicaid requirements, resulting in an alarming drop of nearly 60,000 children from the rolls of Medicaid and CHIP.  This decline resulted directly from new administrative requirements including face-to-face interviews for renewals of coverage.  And the Center’s survey of all counties revealed that this enrollment barrier was further exacerbated by the inaccessibility of Medicaid offices and outstations to rural recipients. 

In response, the Center, MHAP and their partners launched a communications campaign in 2007 to persuade state officials to rescind the face-to-face requirement; to strengthen outreach and education about Medicaid and CHIP; and to implement proven program integrity standards that do not compromise access to health insurance coverage for eligible children and families. The Center engaged, on a pro bono basis, the law firms of Manatt, Phelps & Phillips to develop a report to provide information to legislators, and Covington & Burling to develop outreach materials. The Center and its coalition partners, including national partners Center on Budget and Policy Priorities and National Health Law Program, worked with Lake Research Partners to conduct public opinion research that showed a very strong level of support for Medicaid and CHIP. The Center continues to collaborate with elected officials to find a solution that maintains the integrity of the enrollment process and removes the access barriers for qualified recipients.

Increasing Subsidized Child Care – Like all states, Mississippi is the recipient of a federal block grant to help defray the cost of child care for low income working parents.  Unlike many other states, Mississippi does not supplement federal funds at all, and the federal money serves at most 25 percent of the state’s eligible families. In each of the last several years, however, up to $30 million in Temporary Assistance to Needy Families (TANF) dollars -- money that could be spent on child care -- has remained unused in Mississippi.  Child care funds are administered through the Department of Human Services (DHS), which subcontracts the application process and oversight of the voucher program to eight Planning and Development Districts and one Head Start program.  Participation in the voucher program has proven to be frustrating for parents and child care providers. The Center and the Mississippi Low Income Child Care Initiative (MLICCI) conducted surveys of child care providers gathering data to assess where problems in the voucher system arise.  Prevalent complaints were lack of public input in policy change and lack of communication between subcontractors and child care providers. 

In search of solutions, the Center co-hosted with MLICCI a summit in January 2008 to develop strategies to improve access to child care certificates.  The group used information from the Mississippi Economic Policy Center’s “Broadening the Base: Strengthening Mississippi’s Working Families Through a System of Strong Child Care,” a report revealing that:

• Two-thirds of Mississippi children live in households where all parents work;
• Annual infant child care can cost more than tuition at a public, four-year university; and
• The number of children living in families with incomes below the income eligibility limits for the child care subsidy program remains significantly higher than the subsidy program capacity.

The Mississippi Center for Justice, along with its partners, continues to perform outreach and educational campaigns to raise the level of awareness about this priority issue among elected officials and the general public.