Mississippi Advisory Opinions May 23, 1979: 19790523 (May 23, 1979)

Advisory Opinion Text

Dr. E. E. Thrash

Executive Secretary and Director

Board of Trustees of State Institutions of Higher Learning

Post Office Box 2336

Jackson, Mississippi 39205

Re: Board of Trustees—Proposed Board regulations and restrictions on employees as candidates for public office.

Dear Dr. Thrash:

Your request of May 18, 1979, addressed to Honorable A. F. Summer, Attorney General, has been received and assigned to this writer for research and reply. In your request dated May 18, 1979, you set forth the following proposition:

‘Can the Board of Trustees of State Institutions of Higher Learning establish a policy which would require the following procedures in connection with the campaign for an election to public offices for which salaries are paid?

‘(1) To require an employee to take leave without pay upon the announcement that he/she is a candidate for a public office, the same being a salaried position.

‘(2) Should the employee be elected to a public office, the same being a salaried position, the employee is required to resign his/her position with the institution or agency under the governance of the Board of Trustees of State Institutions of Higher Learning.’

The answer to your inquiry appears in the language and substance of a recent United States Supreme Court decision, Dougherty County, Georgia, Board of Education v. White , 439 U.S. 32, 99 S.Ct. 368, 58 L.Ed.2d 269 (1978) . There the court was confronted with a regulation whereby a candidate for office was compelled to take leave of absence without pay. While it is quite true that the court did not decide the constitutionality of the leave requirement in that case, it did state that such a requirement imposed after the effective date of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 should be submitted for the approval of the Attorney General of the United States or of the United States District Court for the District of Columbia.

A. F. Summer, Attorney General.