Jackson Free Press

There's never a slow news week in Jackson, Miss., and last week was no exception. Here are the local stories JFP reporters brought you in case you missed them:

1. The controversial "Protecting Freedom of Conscience from Religious Discrimination Act" is now state law, after the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals reversed the 2016 injunction that prevented House Bill 1523 from becoming law last July.
2. Several conservation groups plan to sue the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency for failing to hold Mississippi and Alabama accountable for violating certain provisions of the Clean Air Act.
3. Mississippi utility regulators want to pull the plug on costly technology at a first-of-its-kind power plant, saying one of the nation's largest utilities should absorb more than $6.5 billion in losses and ratepayers should pay nothing more.
4. State education officials said Wednesday that 10 Mississippi high school students were allowed to graduate only because of testing errors in their favor, but the state won't revoke their diplomas.
5. The State of Mississippi has taken over 3,500 abandoned and blighted properties that previous owners failed to pay taxes on for three years.
6. Not everyone is supportive of expanding the pastel-painted affordable housing units in the Farish Street Historic District.
7. Police charged Lakia Bradley and Kendrick Jackson with three counts of aggravated assault and shooting into an occupied vehicle after a bullet struck a sleeping 9-year-old in the car.
8. State law allows voters who are 65 and older, or will otherwise be unavailable to vote on election day, to cast absentees through the mail or in person at a city registrar's office for municipal elections or circuit clerk's office for all others.
9. As tuition grows more expensive at Mississippi's universities and community colleges, more students are seeking aid to help them pay. But the state's financial aid programs have problems of their own.
10. After nearly two years of litigation, U.S. District Judge Henry Wingate ordered the State of Mississippi to release a 2015 report on its system of mental-health care for children, referred to as the TAC report.

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