Mississippi House Begins Assembling Redistricting Committee

As the Mississippi Legislature prepares to redraw the legislative, congressional and Supreme Court district maps, House Speaker Jason White, R-West, has appointed eight Republican and two Democratic representatives to a joint redistricting committee.

The Mississippi House and Senate will both have members be part of the Mississippi Standing Joint Legislative Committee on Reapportionment and Redistricting. On Friday, White named Republican Reps. Noah Sanford, R-Collins, and Mark Tullos, R-Raleigh, who serve as the chairman and vice chairman, respectively, of the House Reapportionment and Elections Committee, to oversee the redistricting process.

The House speaker appointed Reps. Donnie Bell, R-Fulton, and Rodney Hall, R-Southaven, to work on redrawing Mississippi’s 1st Congressional District; Reps. Kevin Horan, R-Grenada and Tracey Rosebud, D-Tutwiler, to Mississippi’s 2nd Congressional District; Reps. Scott Bounds, R-Philadelphia, and Carl Mickens, D-Brooksville, to Mississippi’s 3rd Congressional District; and Reps. Jay McKnight, R-Gulfport and Missy McGee, R-Hattiesburg to Mississippi’s 4th Congressional District.

“These House members represent a diverse set of skills and backgrounds,” White said in a Friday press release. “The Joint Committee will explore the best path forward to establish principles for redistricting based on the recent Callais Supreme Court decision. I’m confident these members will review all relevant information, listen to the constituencies across our state, and come forward with a plan that reflects the requirements of the post-Callais landscape.”

Lt. Gov. Delbert Hosemann has not yet announced which senators will join the representatives on the committee. The Mississippi Free Press reached out to Hosemann’s office to see when he would release the list, but did not receive a response by press time.

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.

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. More than a third of Mississippians are Black, but all three districts—which each elect two Mississippi Supreme Court justices—are majority-white.

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.

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. The new districts led to the election of Sen. Johnny DuPree, D-Hattiesberg, the first time that city has ever had a Black senator represent them in Jackson, despite the city’s population being 51% Black.

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 with a new round of redistricting.

Reeves floated the possibility of a special session for legislative redistricting this year when talking to reporters last month at the Neshoba County Fair. During a special session, the Legislature may only consider topics explicitly called for by the governor.

Legislative redistricting may require lawmakers to convene in Jackson before this January 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 on June 25, 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.”

It is unknown how far redistricting will go if a special session does come together, though Republican leaders have generally praised the Callais decision. Lt. Gov. Delbert Hosemann said the ruling put “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, Mississippi’s only majority-Black congressional district and home to Mississippi’s only Black congressman, Bennie Thompson.

Follow the Mississippi Free Press’ coverage of voting rights and read past stories here.

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