Jennifer Coursey, a registered voter in Petal, Mississippi, and her partner received letters on Sept. 19 and 21 from Forrest County Circuit Clerk Gwen Wilks that said Mississippi’s legislative district boundaries are reverting back to 2022 maps that were in place before a federal court forced the State to redraw legislative boundaries to give more power to Black voters.
“Mississippi’s legislative district boundaries were changed in 2025 pursuant to legislative redistricting and a federal court order,” the letter said. “The United States Supreme Court later vacated that court judgement and remanded the case to the United States District Court for further consideration. As a result, the legislative boundaries for your area are being restored to the boundaries that were in effect prior to the 2025 redistricting.
Confused, Coursey spent a couple of hours researching how and why the clerk could make that change when the Legislature has not passed new district maps this year and is currently not in a regular or special legislative session. She said she had attended the Mississippi Standing Joint Legislative Committee on Reapportionment and Redistricting hearing in Hattiesburg, Mississippi, on Sept. 17 just days before receiving the letter, and she felt like the timing of the letter was “particularly terrible,” especially considering the majority of citizens at the hearing spoke against redistricting.
“I was giving (the committee) the benefit of the doubt and hoping that they did truly intend to listen to what we had to say,” Coursey told the Mississippi Free Press on Monday. “But then turning around and getting that in the mail—whether I don’t have the full information and I’m misunderstanding what’s happening, which I definitely am, or if they didn’t know the letters were coming out—regardless of the situation, it feels very sneaky and very dishonest. And it makes me feel like my time, along with all of the other persons’ time that attended that session along with all of the money that was spent to hold those sessions, it makes all of that feel like a show.”
The Forrest County circuit clerk had sent out the letters to voters after Mississippi Secretary of State Michael Watson’s office told the clerk to revert the legislative boundaries back to the 2022 map, a spokesperson at the circuit clerk’s office confirmed with the Mississippi Free Press.
Coursey said she had an issue with the lack of transparency from lawmakers about the entire redistricting process, especially reverting back to the 2022 maps while legislators are in the midst of hosting hearings across the state to hear from voters about how the State should draw legislative and congressional district maps.
“Now,” she said, “I’m also asking, why are we changing districts? Why are we being reverted back? Why in general? And also, why has this not been kind of addressed in these hearings or in all of this other information? It’s like we’re doing two different things at the same time and there’s no explanation about either one.
Secretary of State Issues Letters to Lawmakers, Circuit Clerks
It turns out that the Mississippi secretary of state sent a letter in June to Mississippi House Speaker Jason White, Lt. Gov. Delbert Hosemann, Gov. Tate Reeves and Attorney General Lynn Fitch that said his team was preparing the Statewide Election Management System to revert to the legislative maps that the Legislature created in 2022.
“In light of the recent ruling by the United State Supreme Court in Louisiana v. Callais et al. and its direct impact on the existing legislative district maps, coupled with my statutory duty as Mississippi’s Chief Elections Officer, I write to inform you I have instructed my team to begin preparing the Statewide Elections Management System for a reversion to the original 2022 legislative district maps adopted by the Mississippi Legislature,” Secretary Michael Watson wrote in a June 9 letter.
The secretary noted that it would take circuit clerks’ office about a month from the time he issued the letter to reinstate the 2022 legislative district maps and comply with requests from his office. On Sept. 16, his office sent a letter to circuit clerks in counties that redistricted in 2025 that said counties must revert back to the 2022 maps between Dec. 10 and Dec. 31 if they had not done so already.
The 2025 maps 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 was the new majority-minority district in North Mississippi, joining Senate District 11, which was already a majority-minority district. The Legislature altered the district lines of Mississippi House districts 16, 22, 36, 39 and 41 to create at least one more Black-majority House district in compliance with the federal court’s orders. House District 2 is the new majority-minority district.
“No SEMS redistricting changes may be made while an election is in process,” Watson wrote in his letter to Hosemann, White, Reeves and Fitch. “For the 2026 election, this means changes will be prohibited from 60 days before Election Day (November 3, 2026) until the election is certified in mid-December. Regarding the 2027 election calendar, SEMS redistricting changes will similarly be prohibited from early June 2027 through mid-December 2027.”
The newly reinstated legislative district maps will not affect the Nov. 3 election because only two legislative seats, House District 70 and House District 77, are on the ballot due to special elections and neither of those districts changed between 2022 and 2025.
“The timing raises serious questions for members of our community who attended Thursday’s redistricting hearing,” Forrest County Democrats said in a Monday Facebook post. “Residents passionately testified against proposed redistricting while changes to State Senate boundaries were already being implemented. We deserve clarity about when this decision was made, when election officials were instructed to implement it, and what role—if any—Thursday’s public testimony could have had in that process.”
The Mississippi Free Press called and left voicemails with questions of how the secretary of state could revert district maps without the Legislature’s involvement for House Speaker White’s communication director, Taylor Spillman, and Lt. Gov. Hosemann’s communication director, Hannah Milliet, but neither responded by press time.
‘Trying to Make the Right Changes’
After the Legislature passed the map in 2022 and Gov. Tate Reeves signed the changes into law, voting rights advocates filed a federal lawsuit, alleging that the new district map violated the Voting Rights Act and the U.S. Constitution by denying Black voters the ability to elect a justice of their choice.
The U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Mississippi ruled that the Mississippi Legislature had to redraw its House and Senate district maps to include more majority-Black districts, finding the existing districts did not offer Black voters equal participation in the political process. The court ruled that the Legislature needs to create more majority-Black districts around DeSoto County in North Mississippi and the City of Hattiesburg in Forrest County in South Mississippi.
The new maps resulted in a special election last November in which Democrats flipped a House seat and two Senate seats, breaking the Republican Senate supermajority. With the new maps, Black lawmakers hold 29% of Mississippi Senate seats and 34% of Mississippi House seats; Black Mississippians make up 38% of the state’s population.
Born and raised in Forrest County, Jennifer Coursey, a 50-year-old white woman, decided to move to California when she was 19 because of numerous racist incidents she observed while living in Mississippi.
She recalled being “terrified” as a young teenager when she witnessed a Ku Klux Klan march at the intersection of Hardy Street and Pine Street in downtown Hattiesburg. Another time, Coursey was working at a Subway on Broadway Drive when a customer came in to order but refused to let a Black worker make his food.
“But I left Mississippi because of those kinds of experiences because it was awful and ugly,” she said. “And at the time, I was a young person, and I didn’t really understand how I could affect any kind of change.”
Coursey moved back to Mississippi because of the good schools in Petal, where her son attends high school. Although she “didn’t expect to really enjoy” living in Mississippi, she was “pleasantly surprised” to see all of the positive changes that had happened in Forrest County while she was living in other states.
“Racism is still absolutely embedded in this state, in these communities, sometimes it’s a little more subtle,” Coursey said. “I think since Trump got elected it’s a little less subtle. People have gotten braver about being outwardly racist. But I felt like, overall, we were moving forward and we were trying to make the right changes. It doesn’t escape my attention that the maps were only redone previously because the court said so. But, we followed through and we did it, and it was a big win.”
But on May 18, 2026, the U.S. Supreme Court reversed the 2024 federal court ruling after an appeal. The Republican-appointed U.S. Supreme Court majority did not explain why it issued the ruling other than saying it was a result of its April 29 Louisiana v. Callais decision, which largely neutralized Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, a law that has long ensured southern states couldn’t lock Black voters out of representation. The court ruled in that case that Louisiana relied too heavily on race when it created the state’s second majority-Black district .
The U.S. Supreme Court remanded the Mississippi case, originally brought forth by a group of Mississippi voters along with the NAACP, back to the U.S. District for the Southern District of Mississippi for further arguments. The lower federal court will now decide whether private individuals may sue to enforce Section 2.
Follow the Mississippi Free Press’ coverage of voting rights and read past stories here.
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