Redistricting fight revives Mississippi voting rights concerns

A recent U.S. Supreme Court decision has renewed concerns that lawmakers in Mississippi could redraw political maps in ways that weaken Black voting power, Peter Allen wrote.

Allen said the court’s ruling in Louisiana v. Callais and Justice Samuel Alito’s majority opinion effectively reduce the force of the Voting Rights Act and allow politicians greater leeway to decline drawing districts that would give Black voters a majority.

Allen outlined a history in which Mississippi officials used the state’s 1890 constitution and other measures to limit Black political participation, and said federal courts and the Voting Rights Act helped curb those practices beginning in the late 1960s and 1970s.

Allen wrote that, almost immediately after the decision, Gov. Tate Reeves and other Mississippi politicians began moves he described as efforts to eliminate the state’s majority-Black 2nd Congressional District, which has elected Democrat Bennie Thompson since 1993. Allen noted that Mike Espy was elected from the district in 1986 as the first Black Mississippian in Congress since the 1800s.

Allen said legislative leaders are also reviewing boundaries for 52 state Senate seats and 122 state House seats, with what he described as the presumed intent to reduce the number of majority-Black districts. He wrote that there are currently 17 majority-Black Senate districts and 43 in the House, and that three new majority-Black legislative districts were ordered by courts in 2025. Allen predicted legislators could move to eliminate those court-ordered districts before the 2027 state elections.

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