County sued over Supervisor district lines

Sep 17, 2024- Attorneys for the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), the Legal Defense Fund (LDF) and Harvard Election Law Clinic have filed a federal court lawsuit against DeSoto County officials. The lawsuit was filed in U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Mississippi at Oxford on Sept. 12.  

In response, a statement from the county said, “The Board of Supervisors denies the allegations in the lawsuit.  The County is unable to discuss anything further due to the litigation.”

The complaint being filed concerns the alleged lack of Black representation in the mapping of voting districts in the county. It seeks one Black-majority district for the County Board of Supervisors, claiming Black representation on the Board is diluted since Horn Lake is divided into two Supervisors districts, being Districts 3 and 4.  

The current five-member Board makeup is four men and one woman; all are White. 

This lawsuit is made on behalf of Harold Harris, Pastor Robert Tipton, Jr. the Delta Sigma Theta Sorority and the DeSoto County National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). It claims the current drawing of Supervisor districts violates Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act.

Harris is a Walls resident and Tipton is from Nesbit. Both are members of the DeSoto County NAACP with Tipton as its president.  The lawsuit states both are also registered voters.  

In the legal action, they claim the county lines in violation reflect representation on the Board of Supervisors, DeSoto County School District Board of Education, the County Election Commission, for County Justice Court Judges and for Constables who are also chosen by district.

Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act  “prohibits electoral mechanisms that prevent Black citizens from having an equal opportunity to participate in the political process and to elect their candidates of choice.” The county’s 2022 Plan violates the Voting Right Act Section 2, the plaintiffs say, because Black voters in DeSoto County “do not have the opportunity in any of the County’s five districts to elect their preferred candidate to any of the County Offices.”

The complaint states, “Nearly a third of DeSoto County’s residents are Black, but they have been deprived of fair political representation under the 2022 redistricting plan (“the 2022 Plan”) passed by the DeSoto County Board of Supervisors. The 2022 Plan governs elections for the following public offices in DeSoto County: the five members of the County’s Board of Supervisors, the five members of the County’s Board of Education, the five members of the County’s Election Commission, the five Judges of the County’s Justice Court, and the County’s five Constables (collectively, “County Offices”).

The lawsuit says the Voting Rights Act would be satisfied if a district, encompassing all of Horn Lake and to include the Town of Walls, were drawn.  

Back in July, a three-judge panel ruled that legislative districts in DeSoto County and in Hattiesburg needed to be redrawn for similar reasons.  

A link to the latest lawsuit is found here: Lawsuit in U.S. District Court