‘Groundhog Day has come to an end’: Appeals court orders dismissal of Jackson airport authority in lawsuit

A federal appeals court has ruled, again, that members of Jackson’s airport authority can’t sue over a state takeover of the city’s airport.

The court overruled a lower federal court decision, and ordered it to dismiss members of the airport authority in a lawsuit to block a state takeover of the Jackson-Medgar Wiley Evers International Airport.

“For the fourth time, Mississippi state legislators appeal a district court order compelling discovery in an eight-year-old dispute over control of the Jackson-Medgar Evers International Airport,” Judge Edith Jones wrote in the U.S. Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals opinion issued Tuesday. “For numerous reasons that have percolated throughout this litigation, we conclude that the current plaintiffs, members of the Jackson Municipal Airport Authority, lack … standing to sue. Groundhog Day has come to an end. Accordingly, we vacate the order of the district court and remand with instructions to dismiss.”

Jackson’s mayor and city council remain as plaintiffs, and the authority members could appeal Tuesday’s order, but the federal appeals court has appeared to make clear it doesn’t believe the challenge should be in federal court.

“This suit is nothing more than a political dispute between state and local governments over control of an airport and the land around it,” the court wrote Tuesday. “One side has dragged that fight into federal court by tricking it out in equal protection colors. That won’t fly.”

The state Legislature in 2016 passed a measure that would abolish the Jackson Municipal Airport Authority and replace it with a regional authority with members from the cirt of Jackson and Madison and Rankin counties. Currently, the Jackson mayor and council appoint JMAA’s members.

Under the new regional authority, the governor would appoint five members including one each from lists supplied by the Jackson City Council, Madison supervisors and Rankin supervisors. The lieutenant governor would appoint one and the mayor of Jackson one. The adjutant general of the Mississippi National Guard and director of the Mississippi Development Authority would also serve on the nine-member authority.

City leaders and Jackson’s lawmakers have opposed the move, and the city and authority in its litigation claimed the move was racially motivated by a group of white lawmakers and violated Jackson citizens’ voting rights. They point out state leaders are treating Jackson differently — an argument city leaders have also made on the state’s takeover of policing and courts in the downtown Jackson area and efforts by lawmakers to take over the city’s troubled water system, which is now under federal control.

U.S. District Judge Carlton Reeves has ruled in favor of the city and JMAA several times in the airport litigation, but then has been reversed by the Fifth Circuit.

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