The Mississippi Legislature’s newly redrawn Mississippi Senate District map does not follow court orders to strengthen voting power for Black Mississippians in DeSoto County, a unanimous three-judge panel ruled on Tuesday.
The Legislature has seven days to propose a new Senate district map, the judges said. The panel included U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Mississippi’s Northern Division judges Sul Ozerden and Daniel Jordan, along with U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit Judge Leslie Southwick. Republican President George W. Bush appointed all three judges.
“We have considered DeSoto County’s arguments but decline to address them because they would not alter this result. Nonetheless, when making a final decision about proper districts for this area, we may need to decide the relevance of traditional redistricting principles when imposing a remedy for a Section 2 violation,” the judges said in the April 15 decision.
The Mississippi State Conference of the NAACP filed a lawsuit in 2022 against the Mississippi Board of Election Commissioners, Gov. Tate Reeves, Attorney General Lynn Fitch and Mississippi Secretary of State Michael Watson, claiming that the legislative voting maps “illegally dilute the voting strength of Black Mississippians.”
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The U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Mississippi’s Northern Division agreed with the NAACP in a 2024 decision and ordered the Legislature to redraw its districting maps to create more Black-majority districts to give Black voters equal participation in the political process.
Read the judges’ decision.
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