A white Mississippi state leader is calling for the elimination of the state’s only majority-Black congressional district after the U.S. Supreme Court diminished the Voting Rights Act in a ruling Wednesday morning that could allow Southern states to slash Black representation in Congress.
“This likely opens the door to redrawing Mississippi’s congressional districts,” Mississippi State Auditor Shad White wrote in a Facebook post, celebrating the decision. “Mississippi might no longer have a district drawn to protect Bennie Thompson.”
U.S. House Rep. Bennie Thompson, a Democrat who represents Mississippi’s 2nd Congressional District, is the only Black member of Mississippi’s congressional delegation, even though 38% of Mississippi’s population is Black—more than any other state in the country.
Mississippi’s other three U.S. House members are white Republicans from majority-white districts, and its two statewide-elected U.S. senators are also white Republicans.
White, a potential Republican candidate for Mississippi governor in 2027, previously signaled his hope that the U.S. Supreme Court would curtail the Voting Rights Act.
Thompson’s district, which includes the Mississippi Delta and most of the capital city, Jackson, is 64% Black. After Congress made amendments to the Voting Rights Act in 1982, Mississippi created a majority-Black district following a federal court order that said its districts diluted Black voting power.
After court-ordered redistricting in 1986, voters in Mississippi’s 2nd Congressional District elected Mike Espy, the first Black man elected to Congress from Mississippi since the post-Civil War Reconstruction era in the late 1800s. Espy left the U.S. House in 1993 after then-President Bill Clinton appointed him to serve as U.S. secretary of agriculture, and voters elected Thompson to replace him. Democratic voters renominated Thompson, 78, for another term during the March primaries.
Mississippi’s legislative leaders have not signaled whether or not they would support redistricting to redraw and eliminate the state’s only majority-Black district.
Ruling Could Affect Mississippi’s Supreme Court Districts
In its ruling on Wednesday, the Supreme Court struck down Louisiana’s second majority Black congressional district in a decision that could open the door for Republican-led states to eliminate Black and Latino electoral districts that tend to favor Democrats and affect the balance of power in Congress.
In the 6-3 ruling, the court’s conservative majority found that the district, represented by Democrat Cleo Fields, relied too heavily on race. Chief Justice John Roberts had described the district as a “snake” that stretches more than 200 miles (320 kilometers) to link parts of the Shreveport, Alexandria, Lafayette and Baton Rouge areas.
“That map is an unconstitutional gerrymander,” Justice Samuel Alito wrote for the six conservatives.
The decision weakens a landmark voting-rights law’s protections against discrimination in redistricting. It’s unclear how much is left of the provision, known as Section 2, the main way to challenge racially discriminatory election practices.
Not much, Justice Elena Kagan wrote in a dissent for the three liberal justices. “The consequences are likely to be far-reaching and grave. Today’s decision renders Section 2 all but a dead letter,” Kagan wrote.
The 1965 voting rights law, the centerpiece legislation of the Civil Rights Movement, succeeded in opening the ballot box to Black Americans and reducing persistent discrimination in voting.
Nearly 70 of the 435 congressional districts are protected by Section 2, election law expert Nicholas Stephanopoulos has estimated.
The ruling could also affect federal court orders requiring the redistricting of Mississippi’s state Supreme Court districts. Mississippi has three Supreme Court districts, which elect two justices, but none of them are majority-Black. It is not clear whether the Legislature will still adopt a majority-Black state Supreme Court district.
Earlier this month, Mississippi Gov. Tate Reeves said he hoped the U.S. Supreme Court would weaken Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act.
“It is my sincere hope that the United States Supreme Court will reaffirm the animating principle that all Americans are created equal and that when the government classifies its citizens on the basis of race, even as a perceived remedy to right a wrong, it engages in the offensive and demeaning assumption that Americans of a particular race, because of their race, think alike and share the same interests and preferences—a concept that is odious to a free people whose institutions are founded upon the doctrine of equality,” Reeves, who last week proclaimed April as Confederate Heritage Month, posted on social media on April 24.
Ruling Could Affect a Wide Swath of States
Justice Alito wrote that “allowing race to play any part in government decisionmaking represents a departure from the constitutional rule that applies in almost every other context.” He said Section 2 is effectively limited to instances of intentional discrimination, a very high standard.
Kagan said the upshot of the decision is that states “can, without legal consequence, systematically dilute minority citizens’ voting power.”
The court heard the case for a second time in October, and it’s not clear whether the decision was issued early enough for some states, including Louisiana, to consider a new round of redistricting ahead of the 2026 midterm elections, in which Republicans are trying to preserve a thin majority.
President Donald Trump had already touched off a nationwide redistricting battle to boost Republican chances.
Legislatures already are free to draw extremely partisan districts because of a 2019 U.S. Supreme Court decision.
The court’s decision was released as Florida legislators debated a proposed redrawing of the state’s congressional lines, submitted by Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis and intended to give the GOP a chance to pick up as many as four seats in the state’s U.S. House delegation.
Democrats in the Florida Senate urged the Republican supermajority to delay debate to at least offer lawmakers a chance to read the decision and consult lawyers on how it might affect DeSantis’ proposal. Republicans refused.
In the U.S. Supreme Court’s Louisiana ruling, the justices did an about-face from a decision in a similar case from Alabama less than three years ago that led to a new congressional map for the state that sent two Black Democrats to Congress.
Roberts and Justice Brett Kavanaugh joined the three liberals to form a majority in the Alabama case. Both joined Alito’s opinion on Wednesday.
The Alabama decision also prompted Louisiana lawmakers to add a second majority Black district. About a third of Louisianans are Black and they now form majorities in two of the state’s six congressional districts. Alabama has a separate appeal pending at the U.S. Supreme Court.
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Associated Press writer Sara Cline in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, contributed to this report.
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