Mississippi Judge Orders Newspaper To Take Down Editorial Criticizing City Board

 Reason - A Mississippi state judge ordered a newspaper to remove an editorial criticizing city officials from its website, a move that First Amendment experts say is unconstitutional prior restraint.

Mississippi Chancery Court Judge Crystal Wise Martin granted a request on Tuesday from the government of Clarksdale to issue a temporary restraining order against the Clarksdale Press Register. The order commands the newspaper to unpublish an editorial that criticized the Clarksdale Mayor and Board of Commissioners for failing to notify media of a special meeting, as required by state law.

That February 8 editorial, "Secrecy, deception erode public trust," has now been removed from the Press Register's website. (A reprint can be found here.) But, as is often the case, the attempt to censor the newspaper has only brought national attention to it.

Wyatt Emmerich, the president of Emmerich Newspapers, which owns the Press Register, told The New York Times he plans to challenge the order. "I've been in this business for five decades and I've never seen anything quite like this," Emmerich said.

The editorial took Clarksdale officials to task for neglecting to notify the media of a special meeting to approve a resolution supporting additional vice taxes, and it questioned the motives behind that resolution.

"Have commissioners or the mayor gotten kick-back from the community?" the editorial asked. "Until Tuesday we had not heard of any. Maybe they just want a few nights in Jackson to lobby for this idea—at public expense."

Clarksdale officials voted to sue the newspaper for defamation on February 13, claiming that their ability to lobby at the state capitol had been "chilled and hindered due to the libelous assertions and statements."

On Tuesday, Judge Martin agreed with the city and issued the temporary restraining order, finding that, "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 reason Emmerich has never encountered anything like this before ishat such an order amounts to prior restraint—that is, government suppression of speech prior to publication or a trial on the merits—which is unconstitutional under the First Amendment except in extraordinary circumstances.  More