Mississippi
Judge: Some legislative districts must be redrawn
JACKSON, Miss. (AP) — Three federal judges are telling Mississippi to redraw some of its legislative districts, saying the current ones dilute the power of Black voters in three parts of the state.
The judges issued their order Tuesday night in a lawsuit filed in 2022 by the Mississippi State Conference of the NAACP and several Black residents.
“This is an important victory for Black Mississippians to have an equal and fair opportunity to participate in the political process without their votes being diluted,” one of the plaintiffs’ attorneys, Jennifer Nwachukwu, of the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, said in a statement Wednesday. “This ruling affirms that the voices of Black Mississippians matter and should be reflected in the state Legislature.”
Mississippi’s population is about 59% white and 38% Black.
In the legislative redistricting plan adopted in 2022, 15 of the 52 Senate districts and 42 of the 122 House districts are majority Black. Those are 29% of Senate districts and 34% of House districts.
The judges ordered legislators to draw majority-Black Senate districts in and around DeSoto County in the northwestern corner of the state and in and around Hattiesburg in the south, and a new majority-Black House district in Chickasaw and Monroe counties in the northeastern part of the state.
The order does not create additional districts. Rather, it would require legislators to adjust the boundaries of existing districts. That means multiple districts could be affected.
The Mississippi attorney general’s office was reviewing the judges’ ruling Wednesday, spokesperson MaryAsa Lee said. It was not immediately clear whether the state would appeal it.
Legislative and congressional districts are updated after each census to reflect population changes from the previous decade. Mississippi’s new legislative districts were used when all of the state House and Senate seats were on the ballot in 2023.
Tommie Cardin, an attorney for state officials, told the federal judges in February that Mississippi cannot ignore its history of racial division, but that voter behavior now is driven by party affiliation, not race.
“The days of voter suppression and intimidation are, thankfully, behind us,” Cardin said.
Historical voting patterns in Mississippi show that districts with higher populations of white residents tend to lean toward Republicans and that districts with higher populations of Black residents tend to lean toward Democrats.
Lawsuits in several states have challenged the composition of congressional or state legislative districts drawn after the 2020 census.
Louisiana legislators redrew the state’s six U.S. House districts in January to create two majority-Black districts, rather than one, after a federal judge ruled that the state’s previous plan diluted the voting power of Black residents, who make up about one-third of the state’s population.
And a federal judge ruled in early February that the Louisiana legislators diluted Black voting strength with the state House and Senate districts they redrew in 2022.
In December, a federal judge accepted new Georgia congressional and legislative districts that protect Republican partisan advantages.
The judge said the creation of new majority-Black districts solved the illegal minority vote dilution that led him to order maps to be redrawn.
West Virginia
Judge dismisses federal lawsuit over prison and jail conditions
CHARLESTON, W.Va. (AP) — A federal judge has dismissed a lawsuit that sought to force West Virginia to spend $330 million to improve prison and jail conditions statewide and fill worker vacancies.
U.S. District Judge Irene Berger ruled Tuesday in Beckley in favor of motions by Gov. Jim Justice and state Homeland Security Secretary Mark Sorsaia to dismiss the suit.
The lawsuit was filed in August 2023 by inmates at the maximum-security Mount Olive Correctional Complex in Fayette County and the Southwestern Regional Jail in Logan County and on behalf of a juvenile at a detention facility in Boone County.
Berger found the plaintiffs had no standing to pursue the lawsuit, ruling there was no direct connection between the conduct of Justice and Sorsaia and the allegations in the lawsuit that overcrowding was ignored and that regular funding wasn’t provided for facility upkeep.
While the plaintiffs sought the spending of state budget surplus funds to address corrections staffing and deferred maintenance of prison and jail facilities, “Secretary Sorsaia’s budget authority extends only so far” because it requires legislative approval, Berger wrote.
Berger also said she could not order the Republican governor to use his discretionary power to commute sentences and pardon inmates to address overcrowding.
In May, Justice ended a nearly two-year state of emergency over staffing in the state Division of Corrections and Rehabilitation. The state National Guard was used to help stop worker attrition at jails and prisons. Last summer, the vacancy rate was more than 30%. Just over 730 National Guard members worked in 17 correctional facilities while the state of emergency was in place.
Gen. William E. Crane, the state National Guard’s adjutant general, had said nearly 240 people have graduated from the state’s corrections academy since January, while 38 National Guard members assigned to work in the jails and prisons decided to stay on permanently.
Last summer, state lawmakers meeting in a special session approved over $21 million for correctional officer pay increases, along with two one-time bonuses of $2,294 for other jail staff who are not correctional officers, such as kitchen staff.
Last year, the state agreed to pay $4 million to settle a separate class-action lawsuit filed by inmates over conditions at the Southern Regional Jail in Beaver.
California
County to pay nearly $15M to family of pregnant woman who died in jail 5 years ago
SAN DIEGO (AP) — San Diego County will pay nearly $15 million to settle a lawsuit by the family of a 24-year-old pregnant woman who died in jail after a sheriff’s deputy and a medical worker watched her collapse in a cell five years ago.
The settlement reached Friday night after lengthy negotiations between the county and relatives of Elisa Serna came just weeks before the case was set to go to trial. The deal was confirmed by the judge overseeing the federal lawsuit, the San Diego Union-Tribune reported Tuesday.
“The dollar amount doesn’t matter,” said Elisa’s mother, Paloma Serna, who plans to continue to advocate for other men and women in sheriff’s custody. “These things do not change the fact that Elisa is never coming back.”
San Diego County will pay $14 million, while the Coast Correctional Medical Group, which provides medical professionals to treat people in jail, will pay $1 million, the newspaper said.
Earlier this year, the jail nurse who responded to Serna’s collapse was found not guilty of involuntary manslaughter in the November 2019 death at Las Colinas Detention Facility in the San Diego suburb of Santee.
Serna, who was five weeks pregnant, was booked into the jail five days before her death. She was suffering from alcohol and drug withdrawals and had told the jail staff that she had used heroin hours before her arrest, prosecutors said.
When Serna passed out, the nurse failed to check her vital signs and left her on the floor of her cell for about an hour before returning with deputies to begin “futile lifesaving measures,” prosecutors said.
The medical examiner determined that she died from complications of chronic “polysubstance abuse.”
In addition to the $15 million payment, the agreement calls for the sheriff’s department to conduct new training for deputies and jail medical staff.
It also allows the judge to monitor the sheriff’s department’s compliance with its agreement for the next 12 months, the Union-Tribune reported.
Following the settlement, Sheriff Kelly Martinez issued a statement noting she was not in office when Serna died and touting changes she has made since being sworn in last year.
“There have been many changes and an incredible shift in priorities, approach, and processes in our jails since 2019,” Martinez wrote. “As Sheriff I am committed to improving our jail system and ensuring the jails are safe for everyone who is incarcerated and for all our employees.”
New York
Appeals court rejects Broadway producer’s antitrust claim against actors’ and stage managers’ union
NEW YORK (AP) — An appeals court on Tuesday rejected an appeal by a Tony Award-winning producer who claims that a union for actors and stage managers organized an illegal boycott that prevented him from producing live Broadway shows.
The 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Manhattan ruled that the producer, Garth Drabinsky, could not continue with his $50 million lawsuit alleging that the Actors’ Equity Association violated antitrust and various state laws, including defamation.
The union represents over 50,000 theater actors and stage managers.
Luke Hasskamp, a lawyer for Drabinsky, declined to comment.
Drabinsky, 74, whose hits include “Ragtime” and a 1994 revival of “Show Boat,” claimed in his lawsuit that the union engaged in an unlawful campaign of defamation and harassment by spreading rumors about him, instituting a one-day work stoppage and putting him on its Do Not Work list to discourage anyone from working with him.
“So long as the union’s conduct promotes legitimate labor goals, it retains the benefit of the labor exemption and remains impervious to antitrust liability,” the three-judge 2nd Circuit panel said in a decision written by Judge Raymond J. Lohier Jr.
The court said Equity engaged in the boycott “precisely to protect its members’ wages and working conditions” after cast members of the musical “Paradise Square” objected to unsafe conditions on set, a racially hostile work environment and unpaid wages. It noted that Drabinsky claimed he lacked control over wages and working conditions, although his lawsuit alleged he controlled hiring, firing and pay during the production.
Al Vincent Jr., executive director of the Actors’ Equity Association, said the union was “glad the court agreed with every single argument that we made and concluded that Drabinsky’s lawsuit was meritless.”
He said the ruling “will serve Equity and the labor movement well in the future with respect to the right to use the Do Not Work list against employers that harm our members.”
“We are happy to put this behind us,” Vincent added. “Our mission is to protect actors and stage managers from employers like Drabinsky, and no amount of intimidation will deter us.”
“Paradise Square,” which explored racial conflict between Black Americans and Irish immigrants amid the 1863 Civil War race riots in New York City, closed on Broadway in July 2022 after 23 previews and 108 performances. Drabinsky’s “Ragtime” ran for two years on Broadway.
Drabinsky, a Canadian, was sentenced in August 2009 to seven years in prison in that country for fraud convictions by a judge who said he and another producer submitted false financial statements to investors to misrepresent their company’s financial condition.
Judge: Some legislative districts must be redrawn
JACKSON, Miss. (AP) — Three federal judges are telling Mississippi to redraw some of its legislative districts, saying the current ones dilute the power of Black voters in three parts of the state.
The judges issued their order Tuesday night in a lawsuit filed in 2022 by the Mississippi State Conference of the NAACP and several Black residents.
“This is an important victory for Black Mississippians to have an equal and fair opportunity to participate in the political process without their votes being diluted,” one of the plaintiffs’ attorneys, Jennifer Nwachukwu, of the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, said in a statement Wednesday. “This ruling affirms that the voices of Black Mississippians matter and should be reflected in the state Legislature.”
Mississippi’s population is about 59% white and 38% Black.
In the legislative redistricting plan adopted in 2022, 15 of the 52 Senate districts and 42 of the 122 House districts are majority Black. Those are 29% of Senate districts and 34% of House districts.
The judges ordered legislators to draw majority-Black Senate districts in and around DeSoto County in the northwestern corner of the state and in and around Hattiesburg in the south, and a new majority-Black House district in Chickasaw and Monroe counties in the northeastern part of the state.
The order does not create additional districts. Rather, it would require legislators to adjust the boundaries of existing districts. That means multiple districts could be affected.
The Mississippi attorney general’s office was reviewing the judges’ ruling Wednesday, spokesperson MaryAsa Lee said. It was not immediately clear whether the state would appeal it.
Legislative and congressional districts are updated after each census to reflect population changes from the previous decade. Mississippi’s new legislative districts were used when all of the state House and Senate seats were on the ballot in 2023.
Tommie Cardin, an attorney for state officials, told the federal judges in February that Mississippi cannot ignore its history of racial division, but that voter behavior now is driven by party affiliation, not race.
“The days of voter suppression and intimidation are, thankfully, behind us,” Cardin said.
Historical voting patterns in Mississippi show that districts with higher populations of white residents tend to lean toward Republicans and that districts with higher populations of Black residents tend to lean toward Democrats.
Lawsuits in several states have challenged the composition of congressional or state legislative districts drawn after the 2020 census.
Louisiana legislators redrew the state’s six U.S. House districts in January to create two majority-Black districts, rather than one, after a federal judge ruled that the state’s previous plan diluted the voting power of Black residents, who make up about one-third of the state’s population.
And a federal judge ruled in early February that the Louisiana legislators diluted Black voting strength with the state House and Senate districts they redrew in 2022.
In December, a federal judge accepted new Georgia congressional and legislative districts that protect Republican partisan advantages.
The judge said the creation of new majority-Black districts solved the illegal minority vote dilution that led him to order maps to be redrawn.
West Virginia
Judge dismisses federal lawsuit over prison and jail conditions
CHARLESTON, W.Va. (AP) — A federal judge has dismissed a lawsuit that sought to force West Virginia to spend $330 million to improve prison and jail conditions statewide and fill worker vacancies.
U.S. District Judge Irene Berger ruled Tuesday in Beckley in favor of motions by Gov. Jim Justice and state Homeland Security Secretary Mark Sorsaia to dismiss the suit.
The lawsuit was filed in August 2023 by inmates at the maximum-security Mount Olive Correctional Complex in Fayette County and the Southwestern Regional Jail in Logan County and on behalf of a juvenile at a detention facility in Boone County.
Berger found the plaintiffs had no standing to pursue the lawsuit, ruling there was no direct connection between the conduct of Justice and Sorsaia and the allegations in the lawsuit that overcrowding was ignored and that regular funding wasn’t provided for facility upkeep.
While the plaintiffs sought the spending of state budget surplus funds to address corrections staffing and deferred maintenance of prison and jail facilities, “Secretary Sorsaia’s budget authority extends only so far” because it requires legislative approval, Berger wrote.
Berger also said she could not order the Republican governor to use his discretionary power to commute sentences and pardon inmates to address overcrowding.
In May, Justice ended a nearly two-year state of emergency over staffing in the state Division of Corrections and Rehabilitation. The state National Guard was used to help stop worker attrition at jails and prisons. Last summer, the vacancy rate was more than 30%. Just over 730 National Guard members worked in 17 correctional facilities while the state of emergency was in place.
Gen. William E. Crane, the state National Guard’s adjutant general, had said nearly 240 people have graduated from the state’s corrections academy since January, while 38 National Guard members assigned to work in the jails and prisons decided to stay on permanently.
Last summer, state lawmakers meeting in a special session approved over $21 million for correctional officer pay increases, along with two one-time bonuses of $2,294 for other jail staff who are not correctional officers, such as kitchen staff.
Last year, the state agreed to pay $4 million to settle a separate class-action lawsuit filed by inmates over conditions at the Southern Regional Jail in Beaver.
California
County to pay nearly $15M to family of pregnant woman who died in jail 5 years ago
SAN DIEGO (AP) — San Diego County will pay nearly $15 million to settle a lawsuit by the family of a 24-year-old pregnant woman who died in jail after a sheriff’s deputy and a medical worker watched her collapse in a cell five years ago.
The settlement reached Friday night after lengthy negotiations between the county and relatives of Elisa Serna came just weeks before the case was set to go to trial. The deal was confirmed by the judge overseeing the federal lawsuit, the San Diego Union-Tribune reported Tuesday.
“The dollar amount doesn’t matter,” said Elisa’s mother, Paloma Serna, who plans to continue to advocate for other men and women in sheriff’s custody. “These things do not change the fact that Elisa is never coming back.”
San Diego County will pay $14 million, while the Coast Correctional Medical Group, which provides medical professionals to treat people in jail, will pay $1 million, the newspaper said.
Earlier this year, the jail nurse who responded to Serna’s collapse was found not guilty of involuntary manslaughter in the November 2019 death at Las Colinas Detention Facility in the San Diego suburb of Santee.
Serna, who was five weeks pregnant, was booked into the jail five days before her death. She was suffering from alcohol and drug withdrawals and had told the jail staff that she had used heroin hours before her arrest, prosecutors said.
When Serna passed out, the nurse failed to check her vital signs and left her on the floor of her cell for about an hour before returning with deputies to begin “futile lifesaving measures,” prosecutors said.
The medical examiner determined that she died from complications of chronic “polysubstance abuse.”
In addition to the $15 million payment, the agreement calls for the sheriff’s department to conduct new training for deputies and jail medical staff.
It also allows the judge to monitor the sheriff’s department’s compliance with its agreement for the next 12 months, the Union-Tribune reported.
Following the settlement, Sheriff Kelly Martinez issued a statement noting she was not in office when Serna died and touting changes she has made since being sworn in last year.
“There have been many changes and an incredible shift in priorities, approach, and processes in our jails since 2019,” Martinez wrote. “As Sheriff I am committed to improving our jail system and ensuring the jails are safe for everyone who is incarcerated and for all our employees.”
New York
Appeals court rejects Broadway producer’s antitrust claim against actors’ and stage managers’ union
NEW YORK (AP) — An appeals court on Tuesday rejected an appeal by a Tony Award-winning producer who claims that a union for actors and stage managers organized an illegal boycott that prevented him from producing live Broadway shows.
The 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Manhattan ruled that the producer, Garth Drabinsky, could not continue with his $50 million lawsuit alleging that the Actors’ Equity Association violated antitrust and various state laws, including defamation.
The union represents over 50,000 theater actors and stage managers.
Luke Hasskamp, a lawyer for Drabinsky, declined to comment.
Drabinsky, 74, whose hits include “Ragtime” and a 1994 revival of “Show Boat,” claimed in his lawsuit that the union engaged in an unlawful campaign of defamation and harassment by spreading rumors about him, instituting a one-day work stoppage and putting him on its Do Not Work list to discourage anyone from working with him.
“So long as the union’s conduct promotes legitimate labor goals, it retains the benefit of the labor exemption and remains impervious to antitrust liability,” the three-judge 2nd Circuit panel said in a decision written by Judge Raymond J. Lohier Jr.
The court said Equity engaged in the boycott “precisely to protect its members’ wages and working conditions” after cast members of the musical “Paradise Square” objected to unsafe conditions on set, a racially hostile work environment and unpaid wages. It noted that Drabinsky claimed he lacked control over wages and working conditions, although his lawsuit alleged he controlled hiring, firing and pay during the production.
Al Vincent Jr., executive director of the Actors’ Equity Association, said the union was “glad the court agreed with every single argument that we made and concluded that Drabinsky’s lawsuit was meritless.”
He said the ruling “will serve Equity and the labor movement well in the future with respect to the right to use the Do Not Work list against employers that harm our members.”
“We are happy to put this behind us,” Vincent added. “Our mission is to protect actors and stage managers from employers like Drabinsky, and no amount of intimidation will deter us.”
“Paradise Square,” which explored racial conflict between Black Americans and Irish immigrants amid the 1863 Civil War race riots in New York City, closed on Broadway in July 2022 after 23 previews and 108 performances. Drabinsky’s “Ragtime” ran for two years on Broadway.
Drabinsky, a Canadian, was sentenced in August 2009 to seven years in prison in that country for fraud convictions by a judge who said he and another producer submitted false financial statements to investors to misrepresent their company’s financial condition.
