NESHOBA COUNTY, Miss.— Gov. Tate Reeves’ tan work boots squished in the mud that had formed over a layer of wood chippings behind the pavilion at the Neshoba County Fair before he floated the possibility of a special session to redraw Mississippi’s legislative district map.
Legislative redistricting may require lawmakers to convene in Jackson before January 2027 because the qualifying deadline for candidates is on Feb. 1, 2027, although Reeves would not confirm with reporters at the Neshoba County Fair on Thursday whether he would call a special session or when it would occur.
“That’s going to take a little bit of time to get all of that together,” he told reporters at the fair, referring to redrawing legislative, congressional and state Supreme Court district maps. “But I would not be surprised if there is a special session to deal with redistricting sometime between now and when the next legislative session begins, but we will definitely have our redistricting done before the 2027 election.”
When Mississippi Today reporter Taylor Vance told Reeves a special session would almost definitely have to occur before the qualifying deadline on Feb. 1, 2027, for legislative redistricting, the governor said he has been seriously considering “calling a special session on redistricting since one minute after the Callais decision came out.” But the governor told reporters he would not commit to a date for the special session because even he does not know when it would happen.
U.S. Supreme Court Decision Affects Redistricting
The U.S. Supreme Court’s Republican majority curtailed Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act—a key provision which has long prevented states from enacting racially gerrymandered maps for the purpose of diluting the voting power of racial minorities. In recent years, federal courts have ordered Mississippi to create more majority-Black legislative and state Supreme Court districts to comply with the Voting Rights Act, but the Callais decision has already reversed those rulings.
“I think it’s pretty clear and evident to any and everyone that those seats in the (Mississippi) Senate, in the Hattiesburg area, as well as in DeSoto County, were drawn under principles that are not constitutional,” Reeves told reporters.
In 2025, U.S. District Court Judge for the Northern District of Mississippi Sharion Aycock ordered Mississippi to redraw its state Supreme Court map, first adopted in 1987, to give more voting power to Black Mississippians, in compliance with the Voting Rights Act of 1965. More than a third of Mississippians are Black, but all three districts—which each elect two Mississippi Supreme Court justices—are majority-white. Hattiesburg, for example, despite being a majority Black city, did not have any Black lawmakers representing the city.
Voting rights advocates filed a federal lawsuit in 2022 alleging that those three districts violated the Voting Rights Act and the U.S. Constitution by denying Black voters the ability to elect a justice of their choice. But after the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in Louisiana vs. Callais, the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals approved a motion vacating Aycock’s order. Subsequently, Gov. Tate Reeves canceled a special legislative session in May to redistrict the state’s Supreme Court map.
He also noted that other topics could be part of a special session this year, noting that Mississippi Supreme Court Justice Jenifer Branning had called for changes to the youth court system that the Legislature was unable to push through to the finish line this year. During a special session, the Legislature may only consider topics explicitly called for by the governor.
The proposed redistricting could reduce the number of Black-majority districts in Mississippi’s legislative maps, eliminate its lone majority-Black U.S. House district and potentially further diminish Black political power elsewhere. Lt. Gov. Delbert Hosemann has praised the Callais decision as putting “an end to years of federal overreach” in Mississippi’s redistricting matters, but Reeves and other white Republicans have made clear their hopes to redraw Mississippi’s 2nd Congressional District, home to Mississippi’s only Black congressman, Bennie Thompson.
‘The Districts Are Going to be Different’
The day before, Lt. Gov. Delbert Hosemann told reporters and fairgoers that the Mississippi Senate is preparing for redistricting with a select committee that is traveling around the state and asking Mississippians how they want their districts drawn.
“The one thing that the Supreme Court said is that we cannot consider race in redistricting,” Hosemann told reporters. “We consider Democrats and Republicans and they said those have become homogenized. So when you see us out … meeting with people talking about how they ought to be represented. I’m not in a position to tell you how that’s going to work out. I don’t know, but I’ll tell you, the districts are going to be different because we’ll consider Republicans and Democrats.”
In 2025, the Mississippi Legislature redrew its state House and Senate district maps to add more Black-majority districts after another court similarly ruled in 2024 that the state’s previous map violated Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act by having too few districts where Black voters could elect candidates of their choice. Now, with the Voting Rights Act’s potency severely diminished by the U.S. Supreme Court Republican-appointed majority’s Callais ruling, those gains Black voters made could be rolled back if the Legislature redraws maps.
“When we tried to redistrict Mississippi the way your Legislature—the people you hired—wanted to redistrict Mississippi, the federal court said, ‘No, you can’t do it that way. You’ve got to redistrict another way. We want other people elected.’ The Democrats used that to make sure they elected Democrats and not the people that you wanted,” Hosemann said during his speech. “Now, the Supreme Court has changed that and we’re back at ground one where we should be.”
Mississippi House Speaker Jason White, R-West, did not speak much about redistricting during his fair speech, only noting that the House, like the Senate, had a select committee on redistricting that was going around the state to talk to Mississippians.
When Mississippi Today reporter Michael Goldberg asked Hosemann if he wanted to redraw Mississippi’s 2nd Congressional District, which is the only congressional seat in Mississippi that a Democrat represents, Hosemann said he was not “going to get into that.”
Reeves vowed in a social media post on May 13 that the state’s only Black congressman’s “reign of terror” will be “over” soon, referring to Democratic U.S. House Rep. Bennie Thompson.
Follow the Mississippi Free Press’ coverage of the Neshoba County Fair and read past stories here.
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