The City of Jackson cannot annex land surrounding the Jackson Medgar Wiley Evers International Airport, the Mississippi Supreme Court ruled on March 13, upholding a December 2021 Hinds County Circuit Court decision.
The facility is between Pearl and Flowood, both in Rankin County, but on land the City of Jackson owns. Associate Justice Robert Chamberlin wrote the court’s unanimous decision and ruled against the City because its leaders did not ask the Rankin County Board of Supervisors for permission when the City Council approved the annexation resolution in August 2019.
The cities of Pearl and Flowood joined Rankin County in August 2019 to ask the Hinds County Circuit Court to void the resolution, and it did in December. The City then appealed to the Supreme Court later that same month.
The contested land consists of an undeveloped area surrounding the airport. The City’s 2017 development plan included using 400 acres to create aerospace, light manufacturing and distribution facilities in addition to approximately 300 acres for commercial low-density office and hotel development.
The airport became Mississippi’s first commercial jet airport upon its groundbreaking in 1959. In 1964, the Mississippi Legislature created a statute allowing the capital city to incorporate the airport property into its municipality without Rankin County’s consent. Jackson is located in Hinds County, directly to the west of Rankin County.
The 1964 legislation included Section 61-9-5, which the Mississippi Supreme Court said on March 13 “prohibits Jackson from further extending the boundaries of the airport into Rankin County without compliance with ‘all existing laws of this state governing or relating to the extension of corporate boundaries’ and without obtaining consent and approval from the Rankin County Board of Supervisors.”
The law the justices referenced says that, after a municipality with a population of at least 100,000 incorporates an airport outside its borders but within a 10-mile radius, it cannot expand further without “first obtaining the consent and approval of the board of supervisors of the county into which it desires to extend its corporate boundaries.” Jackson is the only city in the state with a population exceeding 100,000 people.