Source: http://www.glawms.com/research-area-2
Timestamp: 2019-04-24 04:18:12+00:00

Document:
DENIAL OF MANDAMUS, MTCA CLAIM, PROPERTY INTEREST CLAIM UNDER DUE PROCESS CLAUSE and TAKINGS CLAIM: Following the School District's initial vote to set the Superintendent's salary at $106,964, as authorized by Mississippi Code Section 37-9-69, the School District's Board of Trustees met in a special meeting and voted to set the salary at $90,000. In granting the School District's motion to dismiss the Superintendent's Second Amended Complaint, under Rule 12(b)(1) and, in the alternative, Rule 12(b)(6), Fed. R. Civ. Proc., the District Court denied the Superintendent's request for a Writ of Mandamus, rejected the Superintendent's demand to impose liability on the School District under the Mississippi Tort Claims Act for breach of duty for failing to carry out the ministerial act of paying the Superintendent the $106,964 salary approved on January 10, 2017, holding that the MTCA claim was barred for failure to comply with the MTCA’s notice requirement, see Alidoust v. Hancock County, Miss., 2017 WL 3298682, *2 (S.D. Miss. Aug. 2, 2017), and rejected the Superintendent's claims under the Fourteenth Amendment Due Process clause and Fifth Amendment takings clause.
In holding that the Superintendent had not satisfied any of the three elements of mandamus review, the District Court reasoned that "the Plaintiff had the right to appeal the school board’s final salary decision to the chancery court under Mississippi Code Section 37-9-113, but did not engage in judicial review. Thus, making this writ a substitute for the regular appeals process. Next, the Plaintiff has failed to establish that his right to mandamus is clear and indisputable, as he provided mere conclusory allegations instead of factual assertions. Finally, mandamus is inappropriate under the circumstances because mandamus will not lie to control the discretion of a school board. Hinds County Democratic Executive Committee v. Muirhead, 259 So. 2d 692 (Miss. 1972). Accordingly, this Court declines to consider the Plaintiff’s petition for mandamus review."
1. Taylor Bell v. Itawamba County Board of Education, 859 F. Supp. 2d 834 (N. D. Miss. March 15, 2012); oral argument before Barksdale, J., Graves, J. and Dennis, J., held Dec. 3, 2012; aff’d in part, rev’d in part and remanded by divided panel, 774 F. 3d 280 (5th Cir. December 12, 2014), petition for rehearing en banc granted, 5 Cir., 2014, 774 F.3d 280); en banc argument May 12, 2015; affirmed, Majority Opinion by Barksdale, J., (5th Cir. August 20, 2015) cert. denied, No. 15-666 (U.S. February 29, 2016).
Dismissal of One Person, One Vote Claims and Claims for Post-Election Relief on Grounds of Mootness; Inapplicability of “Capable of Repetition, Yet Evading Review” Exception to Mootness Doctrine; Failure to Show Egregious Violation of Voting Rights Act.
Dismissal of one person, one vote claim against multiple counties in second appeal by NAACP Appellants based on inapplicability of appellate doctrine of "capable of repetition, yet evading review" by reason of, inter alia, impact of Shelby County, Alabama v. Holder (U.S. June 25, 2013).
MHSAA 50% Rule Upheld in face of Equal Protection Challenge.
Dismissal of One Person, One Vote challenge to redistricting of counties based on mootness.
Summary Judgment affirmed in favor of school district based on discretionary function immunity under MTCA and absence of premises liability under Miss. Code Ann. Sections 11-46-9(1)(d) and (v) (Supp. 2011), arising from student's injury while participating in physical education class.
A construction company challenged the City of Biloxi’s imposition of height restrictions and the impact of those restrictions on its proposed real estate development near the flight path of a runway at Keesler AFB. The matter proceeded to trial, the jury found for the City of Biloxi and awarded no damages.
COUNTY REDISTRICTING; ONE PERSON, ONE VOTE; ELECTIONS UNDER EXISTING DISTRICT LINES.
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ISSUE AND CLAIM PRECLUSION: SUMMARY JUDGMENT AFFIRMED: Applying Issue and claim preclusion following a state appellate court decision against plaintiffs, the Fifth Circuit affirmed in part and vacated and dismissed w/o prejudice in part a summary judgment for the City.
ANTITRUST: SUMMARY JUDGMENT: Summary Judgment was granted in favor of casinos based on plaintiff’s failure to establish a claim of antitrust violations under Section 1 of Sherman Act, the district court rejecting plaintiff’s argument that liability arose when she could not convince any of the casinos to utilize her domain name tunica.com or, once created, its primitive website.
As this is an election year, many people (including lawyers) are paying closer attention to election and voting rights. So what’s trending in election law and what could these developments mean for the upcoming American election? In this On the Road report recorded at the 2016 ABA Annual Meeting, Joe Patrice interviews C. Robert Heath and Ben Griffith, contributing authors to the book “America Votes! A Guide to Modern Election Law and Voting Rights.” They begin by talking about Evenwel vs. Abbott, a case in which the Supreme Court allowed states to use total population, not those who can vote, when drawing legislative districts. They then address the state of voter identification cases and whether rigid voter ID laws have a significant impact on certain classes of people. Robert, Ben, and Joe finish by discussing political and racial gerrymandering, which is likely the root cause of the U.S. Congressional gridlock.
C. Robert Heath is an attorney with Bickerstaff Heath Delgado Acosta where he practices complex governmental litigation and counseling, election law and voting rights, open government and ethics, and many other areas of law. Robert has written and presented extensively about the topic of electoral law.
Ben Griffith is the principal of Griffith Law Firm in Oxford, Mississippi. He focuses his practice on federal and state civil litigation, with emphasis on voting rights and election law, civil rights, public sector insurance coverage, and environmental law.
2. "Griffith Goes Global." Delta Business Journal. November 2014.
3. A Magna Carta for True Local Government: 800 Years of Lessons from the United Kingdom and the U.S.
This panel addressed the evolving nature and role of local government from the perspective of elected representatives, current and former municipal government officials and academic experts in urban planning law and policy from the United Kingdom and the U.S., and lessons learned relative to local government power, autonomy and intergovernmental relationships over the past 800 years. Panelists included Councillor Marianne Overton MBE, Local Government Association independent group leader and vice chair; Peter Wynne Rees, professor of places and city planning, The Bartlett, UCL Faculty of the Built Environment; Anton Cooray, former law department chair, Hong Kong City University, and former chair of Hong Kong town planning board, and professor, City University United Kingdom; Professor David Callies, who served on the faculty at the University of Hawaii School of Law; and Benjamin E. Griffith, chair of the ABA Section of State and Local Government Law’s International Committee.
The presentation took place in May 2015 at the Grosvenor House JW Marriott in London.
Over three decades after Shaw v. Reno, the Supreme Court breathed new life into the constitutional tort of racial gerrymandering with its landmark decision in Alabama Legislative Black Caucus v. Alabama, but recent decisions from Virginia and North Carolina, including brief interlocutory trips to the post-Scalia Supreme Court, reveal the courts are not in accord on the use of racial classifications in the redistricting process and when, if ever, compliance with Section 2’s anti-vote dilution standards or avoidance of retrogression under now-immobilized Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act, may be appropriately narrowly tailored and serve as compelling governmental justifications for race-based redistricting. In an ominous warning about the impact of the Alabama decision, Justice Antonin Scalia in his dissent in that case less than a year before his death, called the decision “a sweeping holding that will have profound implications for the constitutional ideal of one person, one vote, for the future of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, and for the primacy of the state in managing its own elections.” This segment of the program traces the history and legal course of racial gerrymandering and calls for a more principled, predictable and intensely factual analysis of racial gerrymandering claims that raise competing issues of racial identification and partisan political affiliation as principal drivers of the districting process, a process for which an ideologically divided Supreme Court has yet to provide clear and definitive guidance.
The third edition of America Votes! was released for distribution by ABA Publishing five months before the 2016 Presidential Election and provides a timely focus on three weighty challenges facing our Nation’s electoral system: Electoral Administration and Technology: The New Challenges; The Challenges for Voting Rights; and The Challenges of One Person, One Vote in Redistricting. Consisting of 17 chapters written by a total of 20 authors, the third edition is a must read for anyone interested in the democratic election process and the future of voting and electoral fairness in the USA.
4. Bob Heath, Bickerstaff Heath Delgado - Using Census Data Sources to Prove Citizenship in Voting Rights Litigation.
7. Justin Levitt, Professor, Loyola University School of Law – Quick and Dirty: New Misunderstandings of the Voting Rights Act.
63. Redistricting and Voting Rights Act: Is Shaw Versus Reno the Death Knell for Minority Districts?, March 6, 1994, National Association of Counties, Annual Legislative Conference, Washington Hilton, Washington, D.C.
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