Holly Springs officials have filed a lawsuit in federal court against the Mississippi Public Service Commission accusing the agency of exceeding its authority and for violating the city’s right to due process. The complaint, filed Thursday, comes less than two months since the PSC voted to impose daily fines of up to $12,500 against the city for failing to address deficiencies with its power system. The Holly Springs Utility Department, which serves about 12,000 customers across multiple counties, has struggled for years to maintain its power grid infrastructure and subsequently left customers with frequent electric outages. In September, just days before imposing the daily fines, the PSC held a hearing in New Albany to listen to the utility’s customers and to give city officials a chance to respond. After the session, the three-member commission voted unanimously to move forward with steps to place the utility into a receivership. But the commission, the new complaint alleges, overstepped its authority by interfering with the city’s contract with the Tennessee Valley Authority. Since 1935, Holly Springs has purchased and distributed electricity from TVA, a federal agency created under the New Deal to provide power to rural areas in the Southeast. Because TVA is a federal body, the lawsuit says, the PSC can’t “intrude upon” the city’s power agreement. TVA, though, has itself recently sued Holly Springs for multiple breaches of the contract. That lawsuit, filed in May, alleges the city took money from the utility department before ensuring the electric system was stable, among other financial mishaps. After a stay in the case, U.S. District Judge Debra Brown ordered the parties last week to show cause by Tuesday. The PSC didn’t allow the city an “opportunity to cure (its) alleged negligence,” Holly Springs’ lawsuit also claims. The city had elected a new mayor and brought on new counsel shortly before the September hearing. “As a result, the Plaintiff was unable to conduct a full review of the case file, identify relevant evidence, or prepare a complete presentation of its position,” the complaint says. “Proceeding under such circumstances deprived the Plaintiff of a meaningful opportunity to be heard, in violation of fundamental due process principles.” The PSC’s authority over the city’s utility department came from state legislation in 2024. Republican Sen. Neil Whaley of Potts Camp wrote the bill, which allows the PSC to investigate whether utility service for certain customers is “reasonably adequate.” The commission’s September hearing found Holly Springs fell short of that bar. The PSC told Mississippi Today on Monday that it has only issued one fine of $12,500 against the city so far. Kyle Jones, an attorney for the commission, said, while the city is subject to further fines as long as it provides inadequate service, the PSC would have to hold another hearing before it could actually impose more fines. Regarding next steps toward placing the utility under a receivership, the PSC said it would present its petition to a chancery court judge through the state attorney general’s office. The AG’s office did not respond to a request for comment before publication.

A Colorado judge on Nov. 3 rejected the plea deal of a funeral home owner accused of stashing nearly 190 decaying bodies in a bug-infested building after family members of the deceased argued that the deal's 15- to 20-year sentence was too lenient. Carie Hallford and her husband, Jon Hallford, owned Return to Nature Funeral Home and are accused of dumping the bodies in a building in a rural town between 2019 and 2023, giving families fake ashes and defrauding the federal government out of nearly $900,000. Both pleaded guilty to 191 counts of corpse abuse last year, and State District Court Judge Eric Bentley has now rejected both of their plea deals after family members asked for a more severe punishment. A judge rejecting a plea deal is unusual, and Carie Hallford can now either withdraw her guilty plea or continue without the deal, meaning she could get a higher sentence. Jon Hallford withdrew his guilty plea and is scheduled for trial. After the discovery of the bodies, families learned that their relatives’ remains were not in the urn or the ashes they ceremonially spread but instead were languishing with nearly 190 other bodies. Some said they had nightmares of what their loved one must have looked like in that building; others wondered about their relatives' souls.

A faculty adviser for Indiana University's student newspaper filed a federal lawsuit Thursday arguing his free speech and due process rights were violated when he was fired for refusing to ensure no news stories appeared in the homecoming print edition earlier this month. A lawyer for the adviser, Jim Rodenbush, said it's a case seeking “to have a court state that the First Amendment still matters.” Rodenbush, in a complaint filed in U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Indiana, seeks reinstatement to his job and monetary damages. He was dismissed Oct. 14 for his “lack of leadership and ability to work in alignment with the university's direction for the Student Media Plan," according to David Tolchinsky, dean of the university's media school, who also ended the newspaper's print product. “The question is if a university doesn't like the content of the student newspaper, can it simply pull the plug on the student newspaper,” Rodenbush's attorney, Jonathan Little, said. Phone and email messages were left for university spokespersons. The school issued a statement earlier this month saying it was shifting publication from print to digital platforms for educational and financial purposes. Editors of the Indiana Daily Student announced Thursday that the university backtracked on its decision to cut future print editions for the rest of the school year. Chancellor David Reingold authorized the paper to use its established printing budget through June 30, 2026. The next issue is scheduled to print Nov. 20. Reingold said Thursday in a letter to the editors of the student paper that he recognizes the university “has not handled recent decisions as well as we should have.” The chancellor noted that the “personnel matter” and the budget-related decision to pause printing fueled a perception that the school was trying to censor editorial content. He reminded editors that the paper is “not immune to the financial realities of this campus.” “Let me be clear: my decision had nothing to do with editorial content of the IDS," Reingold said. “And contrary to what has been posted on social media and published, Indiana University has never attempted to censor editorial content, period.” In their own letter Thursday, student editors Mia Hilkowitz and Andrew Miller disagreed with the chancellor, saying the administration’s actions constituted censorship. Subsidized by $250,000 a year because of dwindling ad revenue, the Indiana Daily Student, regularly honored as among the nation's best collegiate news organizations, had its weekly print editions reduced to seven special sections a year. Rodenbush said this fall, administrators questioned why the special sections still had hard news content. “Telling student journalists what they can and cannot include in a newspaper is censorship of ‘editorial content’ by any definition,” wrote Hilkowitz and Miller. Rodenbush told Tolchinsky editorial decisions belonged to the student staff alone before Tolchinsky fired him and terminated future print editions. The dismissal came days before the scheduled publication of the paper's homecoming edition, which would have greeted tens of thousands of alumni returning to Bloomington to celebrate the undefeated Hoosiers football team, currently ranked No. 2 nationally. “In a direct assault on the rights guaranteed by the First Amendment, IU fired James Rodenbush when he refused the directive to censor student work in the campus newspaper and print only fluff pieces about the upcoming homecoming festivities,” the complaint reads.