Court Approves Lawmakers' Redrawn Mississippi Senate District Map

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Jackson, MS (Mississippi Free Press)

Lawmakers' revision of Mississippi's legislative redistricting proposal gained approval from a panel of three federal judges on May 7 after months of legal battles, triggering the state to host 15 special elections for legislative seats this November.

Gov. Tate Reeves, Mississippi Attorney General Lynn Fitch and Mississippi Secretary of State Michael Watson make up the Mississippi Board of Election Commissioners, which wrote the newly approved Mississippi Senate District plan and served as defendants in the lawsuit. They had to redraw the Senate map because the three-judge panel rejected the Legislature's proposed redistricting plans for the Senate on April 15.

The judges accepted the Legislature's redrawn Mississippi House district map in the same ruling. 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 repeat that the evidence from both experts supports that (the Mississippi Board of Election Commissioners' Senate District 2 plan) gives a meaningful opportunity for minority voters to elect senators of their choice," the judges wrote in a May 7 decision. "The plan satisfies the one relevant legislative policy of not pairing incumbents without allowing that policy to override the requirements of Section 2 (of the 1965 Voting Rights Act). Further, it creates less of a disruption to State government, as the current senators were elected in 2023 for four-year terms, and the SBEC plan will nullify the effect under state law of the 2023 elections for fewer members."

The election board's revised plan altered Senate districts 1, 2, 11 and 19 by changing the Black-voting age population percentages -- the amount of Black voters in the districts. Senate District 2 is the new majority-minority district in north Mississippi, joining Senate District 11, which was already a majority-minority district.

None of the redrawn districts will have two incumbent senators facing each other in the Nov. 4 special election. But to keep their seats, the four senators in the affected districts would have to run for reelection and beat challengers in the Nov. 4 special election.

Sen. Michael McLendon, a white Republican from Hernando, Miss., currently represents Senate District 1. Sen. David Parker, a white Republican from Olive Branch, serves Senate District 2. Sen. Reginald Jackson, a Black Democrat from Marks, Miss., is District 11's senator. Sen. Kevin Blackwell, a white Republican from Southaven, represents Senate District 19.

When creating district maps, officials use the Black-voting age population, or BVAP, to determine how many eligible Black voters reside in each part of the state.

Under the 2022 map, Senate District 1 had a BVAP of 25.40%; the 2025 map shows a BVAP of 14.90%. Senate District 2 in 2022 had a BVAP of 32.88, while the 2025 map has a BVAP of 50.10%. The 2022 map shows District 11 having a BVAP of 62.38%, and the 2025 map provides a BVAP of 53.59%. In the 2022 map, Senate District 19 had a BVAP of 25.44; the 2025 map increases the BVAP to 27.54%.

"I believe the new map was the best and only option at this stage of the proceedings, especially considering the microscopic time frame given. Now that the court has entered a final order, we are exploring all legal options available, including an appeal of the initial findings of the courts," Mississippi Secretary of State Michael Watson said in a May 14 statement to the Mississippi Free Press. "To be clear, I was the only member of the SBEC to push for an appeal from the jump and have always believed the initial ruling to be in error."

The plaintiffs in the lawsuit -- the Mississippi NAACP chapter and Black voters in Mississippi -- proposed their own redistricting plan in an April 29 filing, which they said would better serve Black voters in Mississippi, as an alternative to the SBEC's map. The three-judge panel rejected their proposal and instead chose the SBEC's map.

Jarvis Dortch, executive director of the Mississippi chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union, said the state board of election commissioners' Senate district map was "better" than the Legislature's proposal. He said the SBEC's map satisfied the court's original requirements to give Black voters an equal opportunity in the political process to elect candidates of their choice.

Although he was satisfied with a majority of the redrawn districts, the executive director said he had concerns about Senate District 11 because it starts in Quitman County and ends on the Mississippi border by the southwest corner of Tennessee.

"It's not necessary to make that district so lengthy and to have so many different areas represented instead of having a more compact district," Dortch told the Mississippi Free Press on May 15. "We thought you could have a more compact district that was better for citizens, better for candidates and would be better in the long run for the state."

Mississippi may have to redraw its legislative districts after the 2031 Census, depending on how the populations of each district changes or stays the same. Dortch said the ACLU wanted the Legislature to be more transparent with its redistricting process in the future by ensuring that the public is able to give their opinions on the district maps by having a transparent redistricting process with public hearings.

Currently, the Legislature does not hold public hearings during the redistricting process. Additionally, lawmakers and the public are not privy to who approved the Legislature's maps. The Legislature's attorneys at Butler-Snow send the Senate's maps to "mapping experts," but then cannot tell the Legislature who the professionals are, Senate President Pro-Tempore Sen. Dean Kirby, R-Pearl, told the Mississippi Free Press on March 12.

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."

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.

The judges ruled that the Legislature needs to create more Black-majority Senate districts around DeSoto County in North Mississippi; around the city of Hattiesburg in South Mississippi; and more Black-majority House districts in Chickasaw and Monroe counties.

The three-judge panel approved the Mississippi House's redistricting map in the same April 15 ruling that disapproved the Senate's proposed map. The judges' decision said the redrawn House districts 16 and 22 align with Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, and noted the Mississippi State Conference of the NAACP, a plaintiff in the case, agrees with the redrawn House map for the Hattiesburg area.

The Mississippi Free Press reached out to Gov. Tate Reeves, Mississippi Attorney General Lynn Fitch and the Mississippi NAACP chapter for an interview for this story but none responded to the request by press time.

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