JACKSON, Miss. — Some of the most Black people live in Mississippi, but there is only one Black justice on the state’s top court.
A federal judge began hearing arguments in a lawsuit on Monday that wants Mississippi to change the way its three Supreme Court districts are drawn so that more Black candidates can be chosen. Since 1987, the district lines have not changed.
About 38% of the people who live in Mississippi are Black. There are nine Supreme Court judges in the state. Three are chosen from each of the three districts in the north, center, and south of the state. There are nine judges now; eight are white and one is black.
There has been only one Black justice at a time on the Mississippi Supreme Court. Now there are four.
“This persistent underrepresentation is caused by Supreme Court district boundaries in Mississippi that weaken the voting power of Black Mississippians in Supreme Court elections,” lawyers for Black plaintiffs challenging the system said in written statements.
Attorneys for the state said that the present districts are fair.
It is not a promise that Black voters in the Central District will always be able to vote for their preferred candidate that the federal Voting Rights Act protects. This was made clear by state lawyers in written arguments before the trial started Monday in Oxford.
According to the suit, about 49% of people 18 and older who live in the central district are Black. This is the biggest percentage of any of the three districts. In the central district in 2012 and 2020, a black candidate lost to a white competitor.
People who live in Supreme Court seats also vote for the three people who serve on the state Transportation Commission and the three people who serve on the state Public Service Commission. At the moment, white people were chosen to the northern and southern commissions, and black people were elected to the central commission.
In April 2022, four Black people from Mississippi sued for judicial redistricting in federal court. The lawsuit was brought by the American Civil Liberties Union, the ACLU of Mississippi, the Southern Poverty Law Center, and the law company Simpson Thacher & Bartlett in New York.
One of the claimants is an attorney from Vicksburg named Ty Pinkins who works in the mostly black Mississippi Delta. He is also the Democratic candidate for a seat in the U.S. Senate this year, running against Roger Wicker, who is currently the Republican incumbent.
To support the principles of democracy and equality, we must fix these problems right away, Pinkins said in a campaign email Monday. “Our Supreme Court should reflect the diversity of our state.”
In 2022, Mississippi lawmakers changed the borders of the state’s congressional and legislative districts to reflect population changes found by the 2020 census.
Last month, a group of federal judges told lawmakers that they needed to redraw some legislative districts to get rid of ones that make it harder for Black people to vote. It was made in a case that is not related to the one about court districts. The judge who was hearing the case about judicial redistricting was not one of the judges who were hearing the case about legislative districts. They are only heard by judges, not by juries.
