A Mississippi judge granted a temporary restraining order Tuesday forcing a local paper to take down an editorial after the city council filed a libel lawsuit.
On Feb. 13, the City of Clarksdale’s four commissioners voted unanimously to sue the Clarksdale Press Register for what it claimed to be libel. Specifically, the city took issue with a Feb. 8 editorial titled “Secrecy, Deception Erode Public Trust” that claimed the mayor and commissioners did not properly inform the media about a meeting to discuss a new tax.
The Press Register editorial said, “[T]he City of Clarksdale fail[ed] to go to the public with details about this idea before it sent a resolution to the Mississippi Legislature seeking a two-percent tax on alcohol, marijuana and tobacco.”
“The notice was posted at city hall as required by law and said stated the city would ‘give appropriate notice thereof to the media,'” the editorial said. However, “This newspaper was never notified. We know of no other media organization that was notified.”
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City attorney Melvin Miller II told Fox News Digital, “This meeting was open to the public. It was posted as it should have been, and it was on the mayor’s Facebook page as the meetings are usually. Nothing illegal was done by the commissioners or the board as a whole.”
The city commissioners and Clarksdale Mayor Chuck Espy claimed that the paper’s editorial was libelous and filed a lawsuit against the paper, its owner and Press Register editor and publisher, Floyd Ingram.
According to the complaint, “Within the context of his title, Mr. Ingram also strongly stated or implied the reason he did not receive notice to the February 4, 2025 meeting was because the Board and its members received ‘kick-back,’ ‘just want a few nights in Jackson to lobby for this idea – at public expense,’ give ‘away candy at Halloween, toy giveaways at Christmas and hosting events where politicians can hand out goody bags to voters,’ and made the community ‘suspicious.’”
“His statements could be reasonably understood as declaring or implying that the ‘deceptive’ reason he was not given notice of the meeting is provable through someone in the community willing to reveal promises made by Board members in exchange for votes or in the process of time,” it continued.
The lawsuit further claimed that efforts to lobby for the legislation have been “chilled and hindered” because of the editorial and if it were allowed to remain accessible, “immediate and irreparable injury, loss or damage will result to Clarksdale, the Board and its members, and the public.”
On Tuesday, Chancery Court of Hinds County Judge Crystal Wise Martin granted the city’s petition for a temporary restraining order to remove the editorial from their website and make it “inaccessible” to the public. As of Wednesday, the article is no longer available.
A hearing on the city’s request for a preliminary injunction has been set for Feb. 27.
“The injury in this case is defamation against public figures through actual malice in reckless disregard of the truth and interferes with their legitimate function to advocate for legislation they believe would help their municipality during this current legislative cycle,” the order read.
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Miller told Fox News Digital that this was not an attack on the press but what the city has argued was a false story.
“We are not going after the press in general,” Miller said. “We simply filed to remove libelous editorials. Mississippi has no opinion exception for defamation, and there was simply an untruth used to color a piece about legislation. And it was against the members of the board, and it’s hurting the city. Any other reporting on the legislation, we did not go after it, only where there was an untruth about what the board members did.”
In a comment to Fox News Digital, Foundation for Individual Rights attorney Adam Steinbaugh attacked the decision as “unconstitutional.”
“The city of Clarksdale, Mississippi, thinks it knows better than the Founders,” Steinbergh said. “Clarksdale has asked a court to order a local newspaper to remove an editorial asking why the city was not being more transparent about a proposed tax increase. As a result of the city’s lawsuit, a court has ordered the Clarksdale Press Register to delete the online editorial.”
He continued, “That’s unconstitutional. In the United States, the government can’t determine what opinions may be shared in the public square. A free society does not permit governments to sue newspapers for publishing editorials. The Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE), a nonprofit organization dedicated to protecting First Amendment rights, is exploring all options to aid the Press Register in defending these core expressive rights.”
Fox News Digital reached out to Clarksdale Press Register for comment.
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