Mississippi Supreme Court balance of power at stake in upcoming runoff

JACKSON, Miss. (WLBT) – Four of Mississippi’s Supreme Court Justices were up for re-election this year. Two of those had opponents. One lost in the general election and the other is going to a runoff.

The outcome of next Tuesday’s runoff could change the overall balance of power on the court.

Michigan State University College of Law Professor Quinn Yeargain explains that nonpartisan elections make it tough to get a sense of the ideology of state supreme courts.

The best way to get a glimpse of how the court leans is to look at previous decisions. Yeargain pulled six notable cases to examine.

“In recent years the Mississippi Supreme Court has been more of a far-right court or very conservative court than a moderate-conservative court,” noted Yeargain who is a state constitutional law scholar.

He created a color-coded chart with pink indicating more conservative decisions and green the more moderate ones.

“And so a lot of the decisions that it has reached have been or have had a tendency to be a little bit more extreme, more deferential to the state legislature, more deferential to the governor, less willing to recognize individual rights and liberties, less willing to believe that the government has isolated peoples, individual rights and liberties,” said Yeargain.

The more conservative opinion won out in all of the example cases. But one of those four justices that leaned that way every time referenced is now being replaced. Justice Dawn Beam was defeated by Gulfport lawyer David Sullivan.

“There’s still a lot that will need to be learned about the ideology of the new justice,” Yeargain noted.

Then there’s this runoff for Central District 1 Position 3 with Jim Kitchens and Jenifer Branning.

“Justice Kitchens has been more willing to hold the government to account, to express skepticism about the nature of what the government is doing, and how it is acting,” he said. “But Senator Branning, for example, has been in the government. She has been one of these actors and I think it’s fair to conclude that she might be more deferential to the legislature or to the Governor in how she approached her rulings.”

Yeargain notes that it’s not to say that would be the case for Branning.

He hopes voters will do research about the positions of the judges before returning to the polls for the runoff.

WATCH: Justice Jim Kitchen’s Interview on WLBT+

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