
A federal appeals court has given state lawmakers four weeks to redraw a state Senate district after a lower court determined the district violates the federal Voting Rights Act.
Gov. Phil Bryant and Secretary of State Delbert Hosemann had asked the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans to stay last month’s decision by U.S. District Court Judge Carlton Reeves until the Fifth Circuit heard their appeal. The appeals court instead ordered the Mississippi Legislature to redraw the map by April 3.
But the Fifth Circuit denied the request for a stay, writing that a majority of the three-judge panel had “concluded that there is not a strong likelihood that Defendants will succeed in overturning the liability finding on appeal.”
“The Court of Appeals quite properly confirmed Judge Reeves ruling that lines of District 22 should be changed for this year’s election,” said Rob McDuff, an attorney for the plaintiffs, in a statement. “That configuration added wealthy majority-white suburbs in Madison County to an otherwise largely African-American rural district in the Delta to dilute African-American voting strength in violation of the Voting Rights Act.”
The defendants are Gov. Phil Bryant, Secretary of State Delbert Hosemann, and Attorney General Jim Hood.
State Senate District 22 currently covers six counties in the Delta and central Mississippi. The district is irregularly-shaped, with a wide center and two narrow arms, one that reaches north past Cleveland and another that reaches into Madison County, ending at the Barnett Reservoir. The distance between the two points is approximately 102 miles. Mississippi, which has 52 senate districts, is approximately 320 miles top to bottom.
The lawsuit, filed in June, alleges that state officers elongated the district, adding Madison County’s wealthy and largely white neighborhoods, to limit the district’s black voting age population to 50.8 percent. They argue that this, combined with white bloc voting and lower African American turnout, has consistently diluted the voting strength of one of the most African American parts of the state.
Sen. Buck Clark, R-Hollandale, has held that senate seat since 2004. He is running for state treasurer in 2019.
The plaintiffs, Joseph Thomas of Yazoo County, Vernon Ayers of Washington County, and Melvin Lawson of Bolivar County, all live in District 22. All but one of the six counties in District 22, Madison County, lies in the Mississippi Delta and is predominantly African American.
“Gerrymandering stands as one of the greatest threats to democracy today. The current districting plan in Mississippi’s state Senate effectively denies African American voters an equal opportunity to participate in the political process,” said Kristen Clarke, President and Executive Director of the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law.
The Fifth Circuit agreed with Reeves, giving the Legislature first crack at redrawing the district. But whatever plan they come up with is likely to have repercussions across neighboring districts.
In his February ruling, Reeves noted that the plaintiffs had already suggested three alternate plans that comply. Two of those plans would affect only Districts 22 and 23. A third plan would affect Districts 22, 23, and 13. Those seats are held by Clark, Sen. Briggs Hopson, R-Vicksburg, and Sen. Willie Simmons, D-Cleveland, respectively. Simmons is also not seeking reelection in 2019, running instead for transportation commissioner in Mississippi’s central district.
Seven candidates have qualified to run in Senate District 22, as it is currently drawn. Joseph C. Thomas, Ruffin Smith, Vince “Bigg” V Roberts, Colton Thornton, and Earl Scales all qualified as Democrats by the original March 1 deadline. Hayes Dent and Dwayne Self qualified as Republican candidates.
Republish this article
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
- Look for the "Republish This Story" button underneath each story. To republish online, simply click the button, copy the html code and paste into your Content Management System (CMS).
- Editorial cartoons and photo essays are not included under the Creative Commons license and therefore do not have the "Republish This Story" button option. To learn more about our cartoon syndication services, click here.
- You can’t edit our stories, except to reflect relative changes in time, location and editorial style.
- You can’t sell or syndicate our stories.
- Any web site our stories appear on must include a contact for your organization.
- If you share our stories on social media, please tag us in your posts using @MSTODAYnews on Facebook and @MSTODAYnews on Twitter.
- You have to credit Mississippi Today. We prefer “Author Name, Mississippi Today” in the byline. If you’re not able to add the byline, please include a line at the top of the story that reads: “This story was originally published by Mississippi Today” and include our website, mississippitoday.org.
- You can’t edit our stories, except to reflect relative changes in time, location and editorial style.
- You cannot republish our editorial cartoons, photographs, illustrations or graphics without specific permission (contact our managing editor Kayleigh Skinner for more information). To learn more about our cartoon syndication services, click here.
- Our stories may appear on pages with ads, but not ads specifically sold against our stories.
- You can’t sell or syndicate our stories.
- You can only publish select stories individually — not as a collection.
- Any web site our stories appear on must include a contact for your organization.
- If you share our stories on social media, please tag us in your posts using @MSTODAYnews on Facebook and @MSTODAYnews on Twitter.