JACKSON, Miss. (WLBT) – Mississippi Attorney General Lynn Fitch has released her legislative agenda for 2025. The Attorney General is grateful to lawmakers for their work so far but says there are more pieces of legislation that will protect the state’s children, and empower families, the elderly, and consumers across Mississippi.

The Attorney General’s legislative agenda includes five key issues: Supporting Women and Families, Securing Justice, Promoting Election Integrity, Protecting Minors, and Protecting Mississippians’ money.

When it comes to supporting women and families the Attorney General is asking for paid parental leave for state employees.

Fitch said, “It is certainly time to have paid maternity leave in the state of Mississippi for our state employees. We’re only one of 12 states that does not have that. We certainly need that in Mississippi. I think it’s so important to say to our women again, we’d like for you to be here. That helps us with our retention and our recruitment for women in state government.”

Fitch also hopes casino winnings will now be on the table to help pay past-due child support.

“We have been working with our legislators, with the casino industry, DHS again. So if there’s a winning, a casino winning, I mean you have, a child support arrearage that it goes first to that child. Most important that child deserves that. We already do that with the lottery. So we think it’s a great extension to move it right on into the casino winnings,” said Fitch.

The Parents Bill of Rights is another important issue Fitch says should be expanded. She is hoping lawmakers will agree every parent has a right to decide their child’s education, care, and upbringing.

“Parents need to know and be involved in their children’s activities, their curriculum, how they’re being taken care of. They passed part of the Parents Bill of Rights last year, and that was the medical records again. That was important because if you were a child [over] 14, you could decide if your parent could see your medical records or not. Now parents can see that as they should have always been able to. But as parents, we all deserve the right to be involved and make the directions and the decisions for our children,” Fitch said.

But the work does not stop there, The Attorney General wants to bring Mississippi’s Sexual Assault Bill of Rights into Federal compliance. That would include making child grooming a crime and offering more support to victims of Sex Trafficking.

Fitch said, “We’ve trained over 500 law enforcement officers across our state. We partner with our prosecutors. We’re prosecuting these criminals. We’ve done over 55 multi-jurisdictional operations. And here’s what’s key. We’ve rescued 331 people in the state of Mississippi and 21 of those were minors. Some of them were babies, toddlers.”

The Attorney General is also taking on the vaping industry, including prohibiting illegal vaping products from being sold in the state.

Fitch said, “That’s alarming. You have companies that they’re coming in, they don’t mind hurting our children because again it’s all about money for them.”

To protect your tax dollars, Fitch wants to require audits of nonprofit organizations that receive 10 million dollars or more in public funds.

Fitch said, “We’re asking for some legislation that if there’s a case like that, the auditor should be auditing those. If it’s 10 million or above so that we can know what’s happening with those funds. Taxpayers should know if that’s occurring and how their tax dollars are being utilized. TANF is a perfect example.”

Fitch is referring to Mississippi’s Welfare scandal involving millions in misspent TANF funds that went to a non-profit group.

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