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Several DeSoto County residents, including former Republican gubernatorial candidate and current county Supervisor Robert Foster, have filed a federal lawsuit arguing that the Legislature’s creation of majority-Black subdistricts for the state judiciary violates the Voting Rights Act.
The lawsuit argues that when the Legislature redrew the state’s court districts, it gave DeSoto County an additional judge for Circuit Court and for Chancery Court. But those judges had to be elected from a majority-Black subdistrict.
“Racially motivated and mathematically problematic, H.B. 1544 and S.B. 2768 are doubly unconstitutional and violate federal law as they treat similarly situated citizens unequally and deny 3 out of 4 DeSoto Countians the right to vote based on race,” the lawsuit reads.
The lawsuit was filed against the three-member State Board of Election Commissioners, which is comprised of Gov. Tate Reeves, Secretary of State Michael Watson and Attorney General Lynn Fitch. Fitch’s office will likely defend the state in the litigation, and her office did not respond to a request for comment.
State Sen. Mike McLendon, a Republican from Hernando, is not a party to the litigation, but he told Mississippi Today in a statement that he supports the lawsuit.
“DeSoto County was singled out,” McLendon said. “This is bad legislation that was designed to deny you the opportunity to vote for judges who will exercise authority over every person in this county.”
A subdistrict is used for a judge to be elected from a smaller area in the main district, but the judge can still hear cases from anywhere in the district.
When legislative leaders redrew the court districts in 2025, they changed the districts to account for population shifts and caseload data, but they also allowed for majority-Black subdistricts in certain areas to give Black voters a chance to elect candidates of their choice.
The Legislature first created judicial subdistricts in the late 80s and early 90s, partially at the urging of former state Rep. Ed Blackmon Jr., a longtime Democratic legislator from Canton.
In a recent interview with Mississippi Today, Blackmon said he convinced his legislative colleagues and judges in the state to agree to judicial subdistricts after Blackmon said it would not place an incumbent judge in a subdistrict and would give all judges in the state more resources.
“Almost every single judge I talked to in the state wanted it,” Blackmon said. “They would say, ‘That’s not a bad thing.’”
One of Blackmon’s legislative colleagues who bought into the idea was Mike Mills, who, at the time, was the chairman of the House Judiciary A Committee and is now a federal judge in northern Mississippi. The case was initially assigned to Mills, but he recused himself.
The DeSoto County lawsuit is now before U.S. District Judge Sharion Aycock for consideration, the same judge who previously ruled that Mississippi’s state Supreme Court districts violate the federal Voting Rights Act because they don’t give Black voters a chance to elect a candidate of their choice.
The U.S. Court of Appeals overturned Aycock’s initial ruling in light of the U.S. Supreme Court’s recent Louisiana v. Callais decision that rolled back protections for minority voters during redistricting. Aycock is now evaluating how that case should proceed.
The DeSoto County plaintiffs asked Aycock to block the DeSoto County map from going into effect, and a hearing is scheduled to take place on July 22. Aycock would likely have to rule quickly because judicial elections will take place in November.
