What to look for during the 2025 legislative session
Plus, a call for reader feedback on coverage and for freelance submissions
As Americans look ahead with dread or excitement to a year that will doubtless involve significant political upheaval, Mississippi is preparing for a 2025 legislative session that will be influenced by those politics.
With a Trump-aligned governor and a Republican supermajority in the legislature, Mississippi government had a strong conservative bent even prior to the November 2024 election. The state now also has a conservative-majority supreme court, following the defeat of centrist incumbent justice Jim Kitchens by former legislator Jenifer Branning, a self-styled “constitutional conservative” endorsed by the Republican party.
For the next two years, at least, conservatives will control all branches of the state and federal governments, the consequences of which will be felt across the board.
The question is how this dynamic will influence the legislature’s handling of key issues such as school choice, education funding, taxes, Medicaid expansion, ballot initiatives, redistricting and other matters during the session beginning Jan. 7, 2025, which will potentially affect Mississippians for decades to come.
When it comes to coverage of legislative actions, The Mississippi Independent aims to report objectively on issues of interest to progressive readers, and is currently polling subscribers and other readers about that coverage and calling for submissions from freelancers to report on the upcoming legislative session and related topics.
Mississippians are fortunate to have strong legislative coverage by numerous outlets including the Associated Press, Mississippi Today, the Mississippi Free Press, and The Clarion-Ledger. Yet some stories inevitably fall through the cracks. No one can be in every committee room or gathering of lawmakers, even when legislative leaders allow it (which is not always the case). Sometimes, issues of interest to progressive Mississippians do not gain mainstream traction despite potentially profound impacts of related legislation.
The Mississippi Independent plans to fill some of the resulting holes in news coverage by tapping diverse voices in its original reporting while highlighting relevant articles from other sites. Some articles by other outlets will be included under the “Links” tab located in the site banner; others will be cited and further explored in original coverage. The following is our working list of topics to monitor during the upcoming session, with summaries based on aggregated published reports.
School choice and vouchers
According to Mississippi Today, school choice will be among the top issues that lawmakers discuss during the coming session, along with school vouchers, a popular conservative agenda item that enables public funding to be diverted to private schools through tax credits.
Though the terms school choice and vouchers are sometimes used interchangeably, there are differences. The former allows families to choose from various educational options, including public schools, charter schools, magnet schools, private schools, online learning, homeschooling, and inter-district choice. The latter allows them to use public funds, including tax credits, to pay for private school tuition.
Opponents of the measures say they take money from already-underfunded public schools and transfer it to private schools that have limited public oversight. Some argue that both practices also provide an end-run around racial integration in public schools. According to the Mississippi Free Press, Project 2025, the radical conservative manifesto crafted by Trump allies, pledges to increase school choice by diverting existing federal education spending to fund private schools.
Mississippi Today reported that many state lawmakers support school choice, though efforts to expand it have failed in the past. Mississippi already has several types of limited school choice programs, which are intended for students with disabilities, in foster care, with parents who are active-duty military, or from low-income families. There are also 10 Mississippi charter schools, with two more opening in 2025.
Douglas Carswell, president and CEO of the Mississippi Center for Public Policy, told the outlet that although Lt. Gov. Delbert Hosemann and some Republican legislators have blocked expansion of school choice, he believes Trump’s education policies will influence Republicans who oppose school choice to fall in line.
House Speaker Jason White (R-West) has said that he generally supports providing public funds to private schools but that previously there was not enough support to pass further enabling measures. White also has said that he wants to institute open enrollment, in which students would not have to get approval from their home district to switch to a different public school district.
Senate Education Committee chair Dennis DeBar (R-Leakesville) told Mississippi Today that he plans to support open enrollment, but regarding vouchers and tax credits, he said, “At this point, it’s all in discussion.”
School funding
The former school funding formula known as the Mississippi Adequate Education Program, or MAEP, was replaced in May 2024 with the Mississippi School Funding Formula (typically referred to as MSFF, though some House members still refer to it as INSPIRE, the original designation in their chamber’s legislation).
The legislature seldom met the full MAEP funding threshold, shorting it at times by hundreds of millions of dollars per year. Lawmakers did fully fund it for the 2024 school year, which required an increase in public education spending of about $230 million, bringing the annual total to nearly $3 billion. Fully funding the new formula in 2025 would require an increase of an estimated $50 million, according to the aforementioned Mississippi Today article. Senate Education Committee chair DeBar said he anticipates “that we will fully fund the formula next session.”
Teacher pay
In 2022, the same article reported, the legislature passed a historic teacher pay raise of $5,140, on average, per year. Mississippi First’s 2022-23 teacher survey found that since then, inflation and high health insurance premiums have negated the impact of the raise. DeBar said another pay raise for teachers is among the issues lawmakers plan to discuss.
Financial insecurity is a significant factor driving Mississippi’s teacher shortage, according to the article. Mississippi’s teacher turnover rate in 2023 was 23.3 percent, compared with a regional average of 18.8 percent.
State auditor Shad White included a 9 percent teacher pay increase and other, more regressive proposals in recommendations he said he will make to the legislature, including putting more public education dollars “in the classroom” and cutting Diversity, Equity and Inclusion offices and programs from state colleges, The Clarion-Ledger reported (requires subscription). Those recommendations stemmed from a report that the auditor’s office commissioned, which some lawmakers objected to due to its $2 million cost.
College financial aid
Mississippi Today reported that lawmakers will be asked to consider a bill to expand the state’s college financial aid programs for the second session in a row. The 2025 proposal is expected to be the same as 2024’s, to double the amount of money some students receive through the Mississippi Resident Tuition Assistance Grant and to open the program to adult and part-time college students, many of whom have never before been eligible for aid. An estimated 38,000 new students would benefit from these changes, the article reported.
Doing so would cost $31 million, an increase by more than half of what Mississippi already spends on its state financial aid programs. Proponents, including the Mississippi Economic Council, “will have to convince lawmakers that financial aid expansion is a good use of state dollars,” Mississippi Today reported.
Tax cuts
The perennial Republican campaign platform to cut taxes will come up during the 2025 session. House speaker White hosted a public tax summit in 2024 to drum up support for making major revisions to the state’s tax code. Mississippi Today reported that many such proposals have been discussed, and that White, Hosemann and Gov. Tate Reeves all want to slash taxes but have different ideas about how to do it. Should the House and Senate be unable to reach an agreement early on, it would likely lead to infighting, similar to tax debates during the 2022 session, the outlet reported. White is among the more fervent tax cut champions at the state Capitol and is expected to introduce a package that will at least cut the grocery tax in half and phase out the state income tax, which makes up about 30 percent of the general fund.
Hosemann, who as lieutenant governor is also the president of the state Senate, has publicly called for a reduction in the grocery tax but has been quiet about further cuts to the income tax. Mississippi’s 7 percent grocery tax is the highest tax in the nation.
In 2022, the legislature passed and Reeves signed into law a $525 million income tax cut that is currently being phased in. When fully enacted in 2026, income in Mississippi will be taxed at a rate of 4 percent.
Medicaid expansion
Mississippi Today’s Bobby Harrison reported that the House speaker had previously made clear that Medicaid expansion would be considered during the 2024 session. White’s position was a departure from other leaders in his party, including the governor as well as his own predecessor, former speaker Philip Gunn, who publicly opposed Medicaid expansion and blocked debate on the issue.
Both White and Hosemann have said they expect Medicaid expansion will again be on the table during the next session. Rural hospitals are particularly dependent on Medicaid funding, and White has said he has seen the negative impact of possible hospital closures in some of the communities in his district.
The Associated Press reported in May 2024 that any expansion plan for Mississippi, which is among the poorest states in the U.S., with some of the worst health outcomes, would require a two-thirds vote to survive an expected veto by Reeves, who refers to Medicaid as “welfare” and has said he does not want more people to enroll.
White and Hosemann have reiterated their support for Medicaid expansion, the AP reported. The Mississippi Economic Council, the Mississippi Manufacturers Association and the Business and Industry Political Education Committee support such an effort. White noted that politicians often argue that elected officials should run the state like a business, and that, “Providing affordable access to health care for low-income workers is a smart investment in our workforce, and it is exactly the business-minded approach that all of you would take in your own individual businesses.”
A coalition of religious and nonprofit groups known as Working Together Mississippi also supports Medicaid expansion.
In an opinion piece published in Mississippi Today, Harrison wrote that Trump’s return to the White House “could have major consequences on health care — specifically on Medicaid expansion — in Mississippi.”
A key point of contention during the 2024 session was a strict work requirement for expanding Medicaid, but, Harrison wrote, “With Trump poised to reclaim the White House this January, it is likely that the people who supported Medicaid expansion but opposed the work requirement in the 2024 Mississippi legislative session will acquiesce in the 2025 session and accept the aforementioned work requirement.”
Harrison also noted that there has been speculation Trump will try to reduce the amount of money going to the states for Medicaid. “Such a proposal, if successful, could impact what Mississippi does on Medicaid expansion,” he wrote, adding that the question is whether lawmakers will be in a position and willing to enable improvements to Mississippi’s “already dire health care outcomes” or make them worse.
According to Mississippi Today calculations, the state has missed out on $1 billion in federal funding since the start of the fiscal year on July 1, 2024, due to its failure to expand Medicaid.
Ballot initiatives
Mississippians’ right to place on the ballot and vote on unrestricted constitutional amendments, commonly known as ballot initiatives, which was the subject of a Mississippi Independent three-part series. That right was taken away by a 2021 state supreme court ruling that rejected the language of the original enabling legislation because it specified a now-changed number of congressional districts (originally five, now four).
The previous legislation let voters make changes to the state constitution and gave the legislature the opportunity to respond to proposed initiatives before they were put to public vote. If lawmakers amended the measure, both versions were put on the ballot.
Rather than simply update the number of congressional districts to address the court’s ruling, lawmakers responded by undertaking a full-scale review of the law, which resulted in a failure to reinstate the measure during the past three legislative sessions.
State Rep. Fred Shanks, chair of the House Constitution Committee and the lead negotiator with the Senate to reinstate the process, told The Mississippi Independent it had appeared lawmakers had reached an agreement in 2024 but that proved not to be the case.
State Rep. Jeffrey Hulum (D-Gulfport) told WXXV-TV he is hopeful the 2025 legislature will craft a “clean” ballot initiative bill that does not include any exemptions. Some lawmakers have proposed exempting abortion from any voter initiative.
Redistricting
The AP’s Emily Wagster Pettus reported that the 2025 legislature will return to the task of redrawing some legislative districts to replace ones where Black voting power is currently diluted, following a 2024 ruling by three federal judges. Multiple districts could be affected -- up to one-third of those in the Senate and nine or 10 in the House, according to plaintiffs in the lawsuit that forced the redistricting.
Felony Disenfranchisement
The legislature may revisit the issue of denying convicted felons the right to vote. If so, it will be despite a U.S. 5th Circuit Court of Appeals ruling in July 2024 that reversed an earlier ruling by a three-judge panel of the 5th Circuit which found the lifetime ban unconstitutional to be cruel and unusual punishment. The expectation is that the appellate court ruling will be appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court.
The lawsuit that prompted the rulings was filed by the Southern Poverty Law Center, Simpson Thacher & Bartlett LLP and others on behalf of convicted felons in Mississippi. The office of Attorney General Lynn Fitch opposed the lawsuit on behalf of the state.
According to Mississippi Today, the lifetime ban was challenged in a previous lawsuit that claimed it was imposed to deny the vote to Black Mississippians. The 5th Circuit rejected that argument and the Supreme Court refused to hear the case.
During the 2024 legislative session, House members voted to approve a bipartisan plan (House Bill 1609) to create a process for people previously convicted of some nonviolent felony offenses to have their voting rights restored after they completed their sentences.
White, the House speaker, said the measure was about recognizing “folks that have cleaned their life up and gone straight” and “placing them on that better path.” Anyone convicted of murder, arson, armed robbery, carjacking, embezzling more than $5,000, rape, statutory rape, bribery, perjury, human trafficking or voter fraud would still lose their voting rights for life.
The bill died in the state Senate, which otherwise agreed to restore voting rights to four individuals who had completed their prison sentences and paid restitution for disenfranchising felony convictions. The chair of the Senate Constitution Committee refused to bring the House bill up for debate, which killed the measure. If the House attempts a similar measure during the 2025 session, Hosemann could bypass the Constitutional Committee, but senators could still vote against it.
In 2024, Gov. Reeves Reeves vetoed legislation to restore voting rights to four individuals but signed measures that restored suffrage for two people. He also allowed 12 other suffrage restoration bills to become law without his signature.
Jackson water
Mississippi Today’s Alex Rozier projects the need to fix Jackson’s notoriously troubled water system will come up during the next session. In late 2022, as part of a consent decree, federal judge Henry Wingate gave power over Jackson’s water system (and later its wastewater system, too) to a third-party manager, Ted Henifin, whose company JXN Water currently serves as the city’s utility.
In each of the last two sessions, according to the article, state Sen. David Parker (R-Olive Branch) introduced bills to give state leaders majority control over the water system once federal oversight ends. The proposal would have forced Jackson to sell the assets. Both bills died in the House. Parker told Mississippi Today he wasn’t sure whether he would tackle the issue again in 2025.
The same article reported that Jackson lawmakers who talked to Mississippi Today, including state Sen. John Horhn (D-Jackson), who has announced his entry into the city’s mayoral election, were noncommittal about introducing a bill on the issue during the next session, with some saying it was too early to make such a decision.
Jackson casino gaming
The Associated Press reported in March 2024 that House Ways and Means Committee chair Trey Lamar decided not to move forward with a bill to allow a casino in the capital city, which would dramatically change a decades-old state law that limits casinos to areas along the Gulf Coast and the Mississippi River.
Lamar said he did not bring up the bill because he did not have the votes to pass it. However, he urged supporters and potential investors in a proposed casino just over a mile from the Capitol not to give up. Some lawmakers in both parties expressed concern that the bill would shunt revenue from existing gaming sites.
A gaming website reported in early December 2024 that former Gov. Haley Barbour was at that time “strongly against expanding gaming into counties without existing casinos,” but added that, “It seems he’s had a change of heart, as he’s part of the group now pushing for the casino in Jackson.” Citing a report by WLBT-TV, the gaming site noted that a coalition of five businessmen, including the former governor, would present a case to state lawmakers that their casino proposal could help reverse the capital city’s economic decline.
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