There are 159,826 children in Mississippi whose custodial parents are owed child support, totaling $1.7 billion, according to data obtained by a Mississippi senator.
Sen. David Blount, D-Jackson, got those numbers from the Mississippi Department of Human Services on Thursday, hours before the Senate passed a bill that would allow the agency to collaborate with the state Gaming Commission to withhold cash winnings from people with outstanding child support.
“I have to admit, I was astonished,” said Blount, chairman of the Senate Gaming Committee. “This is a bill that comes to us from the Department of Human Services in an effort to get some of that money for those families and those children.”
Some Mississippi lawmakers have pushed for years to intercept gambling and sports betting winnings from people delinquent on their child support payments. Federal data shows Mississippi has the worst child support collection rate in the nation and one of the highest rates of child poverty. The state collected just 52% of the support payments judges ordered parents to make in 2023, compared to 65% nationally.
The legislation, authored by Sen. Walter Michel, R-Ridgeland, targets gambling winnings as a way to claw back some of the outstanding payments. Similar efforts in the Legislature have failed for years as lawmakers have argued over how casinos would identify delinquent consumers and questioned how much money the state would realistically recoup through such an effort.
The gaming industry has also requested a real-time database that casinos could access, so as not to disrupt the issuing of winnings.
In 2024, a similar bill passed the Senate but died in the House. This year, the House has also passed a bill out committee that would also require the state Gaming Commission to collaborate with MDHS, the state’s welfare agency that oversees the child support program, to withhold winnings.
Similar laws already exist in several other states, including bordering Louisiana. In the first nine years, the Louisiana Department of Children and Family Services intercepted an average of nearly $1 million a year from casinos, according to the National Child Support Engagement Association.
The bill would require the MDHS and the Gaming Commission to set up a system similar to the one in Louisiana, Blount said.
The system would impact people who win more than $1,200 on slot machines. It would also look at the rare instance in which people bet more than $600 in table or sports games and win more than 300 times the amount they wagered. These instances would be targeted because they are documented with the Internal Revenue Service.
MDHS would then use those documents to build a list of people with outstanding child support payments. Casinos would be required to reference that list before handing over winnings. People who have their winnings withheld would have the opportunity to challenge their status on the list with MDHS.
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