- The plaintiffs allege that the reason the state allowed the creation of the majority-minority district was based on race, and pointed to statements made on the floor of the Mississippi House of Representatives.
A lawsuit has been filed in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Mississippi requesting the dissolution of a racially divided voting process created by the reorganization of DeSoto County’s circuit and chancery courts.
The lawsuit was filed by Robert Foster, Katie Ligon, Kirby Cater, and John T. Williams against the State of Mississippi and the Board of Election Commissioners.
During the 2025 legislative session, lawmakers passed two bills as part of judicial redistricting based on the results of the 2020 Census. The lawsuit alleges the passage of HB 1544 and SB 2768 that year created racially segregated voting precincts within DeSoto County.
An election to fill the newly created circuit and chancery court judicial seats is set for this November’s general election. The new judges would then take office January 1, 2027.
While the new judges will have authority over the entirety of the county, 77.4% of the residents would not have a vote in who fills the new seats, the lawsuit alleges.
The lawsuit states the law “specifically mandated that this new fourth circuit judge and new third chancellor, with authority and jurisdiction over the entire county, would only be elected from a racially-gerrymandered, majority-minority subdistrict within the County, made up of only nine (9) of DeSoto County’s forty-seven (47) precincts, encompassing just 22.6% of DeSoto County’s voting-age population (the “Majority-Minority Subdistrict”).”
What the bills do, the suit states, is add one new judge in the circuit court for a total of four. While the original three judges would still be elected from all of the registered voters in the entire county, only nine precincts will vote on the new judge.
On the chancery court side, the legislation moved DeSoto County into its own chancery district, creating one additional seat for the chancery court, for a total of three judges. Two of those judges will continue to be elected by all citizens in the county, but the new judge is to be chosen from voters living within those same nine districts.
“Stated more plainly, DeSoto Countians living within the majority-minority subdistrict have four votes for DeSoto County’s circuit judges, and three votes for DeSoto County’s chancellors, whereas DeSoto Countians living outside the majority minority subdistrict get only three votes for DeSoto County’s circuit judges and two votes for DeSoto County’s chancellors,” the lawsuit explains.
The plaintiffs allege that the reason the state allowed the creation of the majority-minority district was based on race, and pointed to statements made on the floor of the Mississippi House of Representatives.
“Representative [Kevin] Horan explicitly stated, ‘we have created additional African American subdistricts,'” the suit recalls.
DeSoto County’s voting aged population is reported in the suit to be 24.14% black and 67.13% white.
“The state is not only discriminating against voters outside the majority-minority subdistrict, but it has unlawfully diluted the voting power of white voters within the majority-minority subdistrict for no other reason than race,” the suit alleges.
Plaintiffs request the court set a “reasonable” deadline for the state to redistrict the county in a manner that is not racially divided as outlined in the state event U.S. Supreme Court decision in Callais v. Louisiana.
A copy of the complaint can be found below.
