President Donald Trump has nominated Mississippi Supreme Court Justice James Maxwell to serve on the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Mississippi.
“I know James will continue to make his State, and Country, proud in his new position by strongly upholding the Rule of Law, and our Constitution,” the president posted on Truth Social.
The seat remained open after U.S. Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith, R-Miss., blocked the U.S. Senate from even considering former President Joe Biden’s nomination of Scott Colom, a northeast Mississippi district attorney, to serve as U.S. District Court Judge for the Northern District of Mississippi.
Despite the blessing of Mississippi’s other Republican senator, Roger Wicker, Hyde-Smith was able to block Biden’s pick and hold the seat open for years using the Senate’s “blue slip” process, which allows senators to block judicial nominees from their home states.
Maxwell previously served as a judge on the Mississippi Court of Appeals and worked as the assistant U.S. attorney for the Northern District of Mississippi.
In an April 2025, Mississippi Supreme Court decision, Maxwell wrote a majority opinion finding that a transgender teenager who was transitioning could not change his name, upholding Hinds County Chancery Judge Tametrice Hodges’ November 2023 ruling. The justices called the teenager a “minor female” and used feminine pronouns when describing the child.
Maxwell wrote that “in Mississippi, a chancellor may only grant a minor’s name change ‘where to do so is clearly in the best interest of the child.’ And here, the chancellor determined (that) allowing the minor to legally change her name as part of a gender transition was not in the young girl’s best interest due to a lack of maturity.”
In 2023, Maxwell wrote for the majority in a decision that struck down a state law allowing Mississippi state leaders to appoint four unelected circuit court judges to serve in majority Black Hinds County as unconstitutional.
In 2021, Maxwell disagreed with the conservative majority’s decision to overturn a voter-approved medical marijuana program and nullify the entire citizen-led ballot initiative system. The ballot initiative system allowed citizens to put issues on the ballot after gathering a requisite number of signatures from each congressional district.
Maxwell’s opinion accused the six justices in the majority of stepping “completely outside of Mississippi law to employ an interpretation that not only amends but judicially kills Mississippi’s citizen initiative process.”
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