A former Jackson State University administrator’s sex discrimination lawsuit against Mississippi’s public university governing board will proceed, a federal judge ruled in a lengthy order this week.  Though a majority of Debra Mays-Jackson’s claims against the Institutions of Higher Learning Board of Trustees were dismissed, the Southern District of Mississippi allowed two to survive — one against the IHL and the other against the individual trustees.  For now, the lawsuit’s playing field is winnowed to the claim that IHL discriminated against Mays-Jackson, a former vice president at Jackson State, when trustees did not interview her after she applied to the university’s top post in 2023.  The recent order puts Mays-Jackson and her attorney, Lisa Ross, a JSU alumnus, one step closer to taking depositions and conducting discovery about the IHL’s presidential search process and decisionmaking.  Ross filed the lawsuit in November 2023, the same day the board hired from within, elevating Marcus Thompson from IHL deputy commissioner to the president of Mississippi’s largest historically Black university, even though Thompson was not one of the 79 applicants to the position.  “Without this sex discrimination lawsuit, the defendants would continue to falsely claim the males they have selected as President of JSU were clearly better qualified than the females who were rejected on account of their sex,” Ross said in a statement.  An IHL spokesperson said the board’s policy is not to comment on pending litigation.  The court dismissed one of Mays-Jackson’s claims over the board’s 2020 hiring of Thomas Hudson, largely because Mays-Jackson never applied for the job.  But Mays-Jackson argued she was not afforded the opportunity to apply because the board activated a policy that permitted trustees to suspend a presidential search and hire anyone known to the board, regardless of whether that person applied for the role.  Recently, the board had used that policy to hire President Tracy Cook at Alcorn State University, President Joe Paul at the University of Southern Mississippi and Chancellor Glenn Boyce at the University of Mississippi.  In her suit, Mays-Jackson alleged the IHL has never used this policy to elevate a woman to lead one of Mississippi’s eight public universities. IHL did not confirm or deny that allegation in response to a question from Mississippi Today.  The post Sex discrimination lawsuit over Jackson State presidential search to proceed, court rules appeared first on Mississippi Today.