Three federal judges are telling Mississippi to redraw some of its legislative districts, saying the current ones dilute the power of black voters in three parts of the state.
The judges issued their order Tuesday night in a lawsuit filed in 2022 by the Mississippi State Conference of the NAACP and several black residents.
“This is an important victory for black Mississippians to have an equal and fair opportunity to participate in the political process without their votes being diluted,” said one of the plaintiffs’ attorneys, Jennifer Nwachukwu of the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights under the Lei said in a statement on Wednesday. “This ruling affirms that the voices of Black Mississippians matter and should be reflected in the state Legislature.”
Mississippi population it is about 59% white and 38% black.
In the legislative redistricting plan adopted in 2022, 15 of the 52 Senate districts It is 42 of 122 House districts They are mostly black. That’s 29% of the Senate districts and 34% of the House districts.
The justices ordered lawmakers to draw majority-black Senate districts in and around DeSoto County in the northwest corner of the state and in and around Hattiesburg in the south, and a new majority-black House district in the counties of Chickasaw and Monroe, in the northeastern part of the State.
The order does not create additional districts. Instead, it would require lawmakers to adjust existing district boundaries. This means multiple districts could be affected.
The Mississippi attorney general’s office was reviewing the justices’ decision Wednesday, spokeswoman MaryAsa Lee said. It was not immediately clear whether the state would appeal.
Legislative and electoral districts are updated after each census to reflect population changes over the previous decade. Mississippi’s new legislative districts were used when all state House and Senate seats were up for election in 2023.
Tommie Cardin, a lawyer for state officials, told federal judges in February that Mississippi cannot ignore its history of racial division, but that voter behavior is now motivated by party affiliation rather than race.
“The days of voter suppression and intimidation are thankfully behind us,” Cardin said.
Historical voting patterns in Mississippi show that districts with larger populations of white residents tend to lean Republican and that districts with larger populations of black residents tend to lean Democratic.
Lawsuits in several states have challenged the makeup of congressional or state legislative districts drawn after the 2020 census.
Louisiana lawmakers redrew the state’s six U.S. House districts in January to create two majority-black districts, rather than one, after a federal judge ruled that the state’s previous plan diluted the voting power of black residents, which represent around a third of the population. state population.
And a federal judge ruled in early February that Louisiana lawmakers diluted Black voting strength with the state House and Senate districts they redrawn in 2022.
In December, a federal judge accepted Georgia’s new congressional and legislative districts that protect Republican partisan advantages. The judge said the creation of new black-majority districts resolved the illegal dilution of minority votes that led him to order the maps to be redrawn.
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