Jackson Free Press

JACKSON, Miss. (AP) — A federal judge is ordering attorneys to file arguments over whether courts have standing to decide if Mississippi should remove the Confederate battle emblem that has been on the state flag since 1894.

U.S. District Judge Carlton Reeves has set a deadline next Monday for briefs by Mississippi Attorney General Jim Hood, who's defending the state, and Carlos Moore, a private attorney who sued the state seeking to have the flag declared an unconstitutional vestige of slavery.

In his scheduling order filed late Monday, Reeves also told Moore to stop making "false or misleading public statements," such as saying African-Americans could be entitled to reparations if the flag is found unconstitutional or that Reeves will change the flag because he is African-American. Moore said both things during a change-the-flag rally last week outside the state Capitol.

At the rally, Moore said he believes the flag will come down because, "God has set it up in his own perfect plan" by having the U.S. elect its first black president in 2008 and by having President Barack Obama nominate Reeves, a graduate of historically black Jackson State University, to the federal bench. Moore also said it was part of a divine plan that Justice Antonin Scalia, one of the Supreme Court's staunchest conservatives, had died.

"When we get that fifth liberal progressive on the court, after Judge Reeves takes it down, it's going to stay down," Moore said of the flag during the March 8 rally.

Reeves said such statements "impugn the independence and fairness of the judiciary," and he told Moore and other attorneys working on the case that the race, educational background and judicial philosophy of the judges and justices, and the president who nominated them, "will have no bearing" on the outcome of the case.

"It would be inappropriate to suggest that a white judge would necessarily uphold the Mississippi flag, so it is equally inappropriate for plaintiff and his counsel to have suggested that an African-American judge who attended an HBCU (historically black college or university) will necessarily find the flag unconstitutional. That is the very definition of prejudice," Reeves wrote.

Mississippi is the last state with a flag that includes the Confederate battle emblem—a red field topped by a blue X dotted with 13 white stars. The banner and other Confederate symbols have come under sharp debate since last June, when nine black worshippers were massacred at a church in Charleston, South Carolina. The white man charged in the killings had previously posed with a rebel flag in photos published online.

Since the Charleston attack, several Mississippi cities and counties, and some universities, have stopped flying the state flag. However, legislative leaders said they couldn't get consensus this year on bills that would have either redesigned the flag or taken state money away from public entities that refuse to fly the current banner.