Thanks, I tried it. It turns out that !important gives precedence to a property that has been later trumped by a more proximate designation.
In my app., ".placemark" will be a class of items below state with id="AL." I was able to control it in CSS to where ONLY the parent's attributes do not apply to them. .placemark { font-size:12px; margin-left:5px; padding:0; color: black; font-style: normal; cursor: default; text-decoration: none; } However, the jquery mouseover/mouseout is not working. If I mouseover a placemark (which is a child of state), I want placemark to turn blue, but I want no effect on parent. If I mouseover parent, I want only parent to turn blue and not any placemarks. It seems all the logic is there, so I don't know why my mouseover/ mouseout is not working. $(".placemark").mouseover(function() { $(this).css({ "color" : "blue!important"}); }).mouseout(function() $(this).css({ "color" : "black!important"}); });